


Cherry blossoms die young.

by Aze



Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, At Long Last, BAMF Haruno Sakura, BAMF Sakura, F/M, Gen, Multichapter, Not quite a fix-it, Other, POV Third Person Limited, Past Tense, Pre-Elemental Nations, Sakura's a key player, Sakura-centric, Slow Burn, The relationship doesn't come up until late game, Worldbuilding, back in time, lots of worldbuilding, plot heavy, seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-02-24 00:18:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13201638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aze/pseuds/Aze
Summary: Sent on a mission with a temporary partner because there's no other choice, Sakura finds herself in the midst of battle when battle shouldn't have happened. Though she doesn't know it, she's about to go missing, part of an intricate plot to weaken Konoha and keep their best medic-nin, by whom almost all healing was directed in hospitals and almost all medics looked up to, neutralized. Not that she'll be in a position to worry about the Land of Fire once she figures out what happened to her.Or:Waking up in a cradle of earth that is molded perfectly, naturally, to her body, Sakura has no choice but to forge her own path once she realizes that help is not coming: if this is a genjutsu, it will not end. When chakra is dormant in every person she meets, nobody has heard of shinobi, Konoha is gone, and the warlike tendencies of the people she meets immediately pisses her off, there's only one thing she can do: raise her own army and rule as some kind of warrior queen, because that's apparently the only way to get some goddamn peace and quiet around here.Renamed from "A Splash In Time (cherry blossoms die young, don't they?)".





	1. Let's do the Time Warp, yeah!

Gasping for breath and senseless, mind reeling helplessly, the pink-haired kunoichi knew only that she was on her back, a dim awareness, on grassy terrain. Her chakra was swirling, erratic and barely-there, lashing in agitated chaos, in her pathways; just as uncooperative, her arms and legs were nigh-deadened and unresponsive. 

Eyelids flickering open, her lips parted as she panted harshly for air, the teal of her eyes met the much more vivid blue of the sky, and it seemed… bluer, to her, than normal. Everything seemed brighter, harsh on her eyes. Was it because the colors, the hues and shades, had become… somehow more? Or had she simply had her eyes closed for too long?

Thoughts were scattered and strange, far-off things, in her mind. Dimly she was aware that she was very, very hungry; that she felt both healthy and as though her entire being was bruised somehow in the grip of something very large and yet distant. No less urgent was the need to relieve her bladder or her thirst, and yet she could barely summon the will to move or even collect her thoughts.

How long she lay there, barely thinking, barely moving save for the furious breaths tearing through her and wracking her abdomen with their urgency, her heart trying to pierce the skin of her chest like particularly enthusiastic double-pedal kicks on a bass drum…. How long, she couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was only a moment, perhaps hours, even days, though her sight didn’t register much movement on behalf of the sun. It was the strangest thing, but as she finally, slowly, began to collect her thoughts, she thought: The air tastes so clean.

 _Sakura_. That was her name, Sakura. The air did taste cleaner… before, the scent of blood had been so heavy in the air that she could barely draw breath without being reminded of the taste of copper tanging against her tongue. Yet now, it was as if the battle had never happened.

The battle. Suddenly sitting up, finding her body was now willing to respond, her chakra settling down into a familiar flow along her system, Sakura’s gaze flitted around the clearing. Nothing; not even a trace of the combat. The clearing even seemed different… and as she looked down, Sakura noted another disconcerting detail; a small ring of scorched earth and grass in the exact outline of her body, a small crater in exactly her shape and size beneath her, hollowed out for her, comfortably cradling her. Tempted to lay back in that elemental cradle again, Sakura paused before reluctantly bringing her hands up in front of her in the familiar seal.

“Kai. ...Kai.. _Kai_.”

The familiar, obedient spikes of chakra in well known patterns, and then a fourth less known pattern, did nothing to dispel her surroundings. As she checked, Sakura noted that she was equipped with the same supplies she’d had when she first set out, as she hadn’t touched them before the battle.

Right. Checking the palm of her hand, Sakura eyed the familiar creases and lines with a studying eye before sighing and replacing her fingerless glove. Not a dream, either. While she had to reluctantly confess she had no idea what was going on, Sakura knew that if it had been a simple matter, her team would already have retrieved her-- _but she hadn’t had a team, this time, she’d been alone, practically flying solo. It hadn’t been meant to be a combat mission, she was just passing through, she’d had a temporary partner, an ANBU, because she was too valuable to send out unguarded even for this even though she’d needed to be alone by rights, but the smell of blood had been-_

Regardless, there would have been someone to come by before now, Sakura was fully aware of it. There’s no way the combat would have gone unnoticed, and if the other side had simply retreated and cleaned their traces and dumped her somewhere else, she would have been found in a heartbeat. Something else, as a result, was going on.

Occam’s razor agreed and reinforced that really, it had to be something else: simply because what she did remember, those few snatches of precious memory (information, a currency like no other) told her that the combat hadn’t gone that way. Still, her instincts pressed into her, and Sakura sighed. Reluctant to leave her cradle completely, she unshouldered her pack to go through her supplies. Nothing was missing; an even more unusual thing if she had been moved by the enemy. Still in possession of her usual equipment, as well as the medical equipment and less standard things she’d packed, as well as a month’s supply of rations, chakra and food pills… Sakura sighed. No, this was… wrong. Something was making the hackles on the back of her neck rise.

Sweeping her hair behind her ear, Sakura paused and blanched. Her hitai-ite was...

No matter. She’d… simply have to request a new one upon return to the village, that’s all.

Doing her level best to regain her composure, Sakura stood, giving the makeshift cradle she’d woken in a strangely nostalgic glance. 

“Well, I’m off,” she said quietly, unsure of why she spoke except to break the odd, almost unnerving silence; silence she hadn’t noticed before, though she’d come close before she realized the loss of her hitai-ite. The lapse in her awareness startled her as she broke the silence, and she felt the slightest bit of paranoia rise in her. How had she remained so unaware for so long, and what had really been messing with her, for her to have been so…

Birds began to chirp about that time, and a part of her relaxed, though she wasn’t familiar with the birdsong that these birds produced. Taking it as a good omen that the almost oppressive silence had ended, Sakura turned her gaze to the east and began to move in the direction of home. 

She kept her guard up as she moved, but she didn’t notice the wide pair of eyes staring at the impression of her body in the ground.

* * *

It didn’t take long for Sakura to reach the outskirts of Konoha, despite how turned around she must have been to lose track of the main paths that led there. What she found, however, pressed against her flat refusal to believe with a harshness she didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Kai,” she breathed brokenly as she traveled further into the city, though she didn't let herself cry. “Kai. _Kai_.”

Alighting on the ground where the Hokage Tower should have been, a sinking feeling of dread dragging down her spirits, she desperately pushed her chakra into the most contorted patterns she could think of, fairly screaming the word for release, trying to force into being something that should never have stopped being there, something she’d thought was a constant, something she’d never been trained to deal with _losing-_

“Are you alright, miss?”

Sakura whipped around, suddenly on her feet instead of on her knees, expression wary, immediately sliding into her fighting stance. 

“Depends on who’s asking,” she hedged, frowning heavily. “Tell me who you are. Why are you here? Do you have anything to do with this?”

The person that had approached her lifted his hands in the air peacefully, making no move towards the sword strapped to his waist.

“My name is Kei,” said the stranger, an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m the son of the lord to the east, and I wondered how you came to be here screaming my name as though you’d just lost a loved one.”

Sakura froze up, unsure how to react to him. To his presence. _It could all be lies_ , her sense of self-preservation told her. _He could be lying to try to get to a Konoha-nin for information_ , and then her logical side kicked in; _there is no Konoha to get information about._

“My name is…” and she paused. “I forgot my name,” she lied, but she kept the cool stalwart feeling of truth about her, as any true ninja would, because she _had_ briefly forgotten it. She just wasn’t telling him that she’d remembered it. After all… until she could learn more about what had happened, she needed to keep things quiet.

“I wasn’t meaning to call your name. I don’t know what this place is,” and again, true; for this wasn’t Konoha. She had no idea what this place might be called.

“I was calling the word kai, with the character for release. I… was confused. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

Kei inclined his head. “Forgive me, your accent is… odd, I must have misheard,” he agreed, and she was surprised to realize that, yes, his accent was one she’d never heard before despite her travels; his words were all broad, thick, heavy vowels and lack of enunciation, whereas hers were soft, narrow, flowing vowels and clipped, sharp consonants.

“Why were you calling that, then? Are you being cornered into something somehow because of your station? My father says that people should be free to be whoever and whatever they wish, but I know not everyone agrees with that sentiment,” and in the wake of the statements he made, Sakura swallowed down her initial protests.

“I… I think. I don’t… remember, but I know I wasn’t in a good place. Do you think-- do you think there would be room for me there?”

Kei nodded, and something in his stance told her that he’d want her to accompany him anyway. “I think that seeing if my father would accept you would be for the best,” he agreed, and extended his hand to her. “I’ve a caravan. Shall we?”

Sakura gave Kei a cheerless smile and, though she didn’t take his hand, made to follow him back to his caravan.

* * *

Over the day’s journey it took to travel from the site of once-Konoha (or later-Konoha, she didn’t know, couldn’t tell, except that from her careful, infrequent dropped hints they’d never heard of _shinobi_ ), Sakura learned a few things.

Firstly, this land belonged to the lord Daichi Himura, not quite a Daimyo like the types of lords she knew from her own land (she refused to think she was in a different time), but still a powerful lord in his own right. His son, Kei Himura, was her current… escort. The caravan was largely staff from the Daichi house, bodyguards (all using long swords, faintly styled after a strange fashion of samurai if she had to guess, though none of them truly seemed to be samurai at all and had none of the same mannerisms) as well as a few traders and a calligrapher. So far, to them, Sakura was a nameless, probably suspicious girl from another town or village or something, found in the lord’s territory without any obvious reason for it, and not part of their people, especially in what she realized must look to them like strange clothing… For the few women she saw on the way to the town seemed to prefer kimonos and what to her was formal, traditional dress, rather than anything else, and the men were clad in either armor or yukatas and none wore anything like her own outfit. She will have to explain that she is from very far away, then, and try to root out information to back up her story.

Come to think of it, why was she nameless, really? Sakura decided that, truly, there was little enough to give away by using her true name; but restraint caught her and held her fast before she could share it. What if this was a genjutsu that she simply hadn’t been able to break? It was possible that she just… couldn’t break it. That eventually it would end. Sakura decided on a middle path; she’d use a name similar to her own in meaning, so that anyone that knew her and was looking for her might find her, but also so that anyone that was simply trying to ferret out information about Konoha might not be able to distinguish what was going on.

“My name is Shimizu Mao,” she said at long last, just before they reach the town. While her original name, Haruno Sakura, meant springtime cherry blossom and it wasn’t exactly the same, clean water often comes from a spring and she was sure anyone looking for her could spot the reference. “With the characters for good clean water and cherry blossom. I’m sorry for not telling you before. I… I wasn’t sure I could trust you. I come from a place where lies are common, and people wear disguises.”

Kei relaxed a little, as did the people in his troop, at hearing that.

“Well, as you’ll soon learn, Shimizu-san,” he responded, “Names are a big thing here. As are trust, and truth. Your trust won’t go unnoticed, and while there can be outliers in any place, nobody lies in our town about who they are.”

Sakura heaved a silent breath of relief and hoped that he was right. As the caravan stopped, everyone but Kei and a bodyguard began to stop and unload the caravan happily at the centre of the town, laughing and talking in undertones with the rest of the town in a language she didn’t understand. It was-- almost like her native tongue, but not quite, and then she realized she did understand, but that it was an older form of her language, and so she didn’t recognize right away what the words were. Kei seemed to use a form in between; no, that wasn’t quite right either; he simply spoke slowly to her, back at the clearing, and she’d grown used to hearing him speak. In that sense, the kunoichi simply hadn’t been prepared to hear the townspeople talk that way. 

_How interesting_ , Sakura noted, _I’ll have to make sure that I pay attention to that. It might be useful to be able to imitate the language_. Of course it would be too suspicious to Kei if she began talking that way immediately, but as Kei and the single bodyguard led her along the short walk to the lord’s dwelling, something like a very primitive Kage tower yet nowhere near the grandness or size (just enough room for an office tacked onto a house, she noted), she observed and tried to repeat back to herself the language the way the people spoke it according to the snatches of language she heard without making a sound. She was so lost in the deep thought of trying to assimilate the wording and movement of the sounds in one’s mouth that when they stopped, she was almost taken by surprise, but her guard was up and she was cognizant of what was around her. It would be deadly to let down her guard in such an unknown place; therefore she stopped when they did and gazed at the building before looking back at Kei.

“You said your father is the lord of these lands?” Sakura inquired, unintentionally using a bit more of the flow and cadence of speech (if not the wording and sound) the townspeople used. Kei noticed immediately and his eyes narrowed in suspicion, but he shrugged.

“Yes, my father is the lord here,” he agreed, staring her down. “Your speech changed. Your accent is still there, but you sound much more like us already; how is that?”

“I love learning languages,” Sakura covered, plastering a wide smile across her face, internally cursing herself for doing what she'd already acknowledged would rouse suspicion. “I don’t know many of them, as I never met many foreigners, but I love learning words and trying to sound like those I hear, and this is a new dialect for me. I’m sorry if it bothers you, I can stop.”

Kei shrugged again, although the intensity of his gaze lessened somewhat. “It is not up to me whether you stop, Shimizu-san,” he said. Sakura decided it would probably be unwise to stop just because he seemed suspicious... doing anything to avoid even the smallest amount of suspicion would probably just make him suspect her more.

“Well, so long as it doesn’t bother you,” she decided, still smiling, despite the stiffness that the cadence came to her with now, knowing that she couldn't afford many more mistakes, and then turned back to the building, smile fading. “I hope your father likes me well enough to let me live here.”

Neither of them mentioned that, judging by the atmosphere, his father might not deem to let her live at all; and she didn’t smile at the knowledge that she could likely fight her way out of here explosively if she had to.

Taking a deep breath to solidify her resolve, Sakura strode into the lion’s den of this strange new world (brave old world?) and had to blink a few times against the darkness of the interior compared to the overbright sunshine.

“Well, what is this?” the lord said, and she could see the resemblance in the lines of his face; though the father’s face was more angular, they both shared worry and laugh lines in equal amount and in the same places, which was telling with the addition of the same eyes and nose.

“Lord Himura-sama,” Sakura said before anyone can speak for her, moving forward two steps into what serves as his ‘court’, kneeling and bowing in the fashion her people had used, in the way she herself has bowed to her own Hokage countless times.

Daichi dismissed the people attending him though none of them left, eyes bright on her; this she could sense despite respectfully lowering her gaze. A few people filtered into the room to look on in curiosity, low murmurs along the sides of the room as they rumored about her already.

“You have permission to speak, strange one,” he intoned, and she slowly righted herself, lowering her hands to her sides.

“My name is Shimizu Mao, with the characters for good, clean water and cherry blossom. I come from a land far from here, and I know this may sound strange, but I have no idea how I came to be in your land. I woke up in the middle of a clearing alone; my friend had been in a fight, and that is all I know from the time before I woke there. I tried to find my way home, but was helplessly lost when your son found me. I mean your people no harm so long as they do me none in turn; and while I do not petition to become one of your subjects I do petition for sanctuary while I learn what strange lands I am now in. I am strong, very strong, and I can fight to defend you if you wish; when not fighting for you, I wish to be a blacksmith, though I know little of the trade it is a hope of mine. I see no better time to try to learn than after finding myself stranded and in need of a profession that can earn an honest living.”

“It’s true,” one of the people from the caravan interrupted, having followed them at a distance, no doubt. “I saw her in the clearing. It was as if one moment the air was still and the next a star had fallen; a bright light flashed and she lay in a depression in the ground made to fit her, with scorch marks all around. I thought she was dead until she got up and ran, and she was so fast-”

Daichi held up a hand to silence the person and then gazed at her thoughtfully for a long time. His hand lifted in a wave, three fingers and a quick circular movement followed by a harsh jerk upwards. The next thing she knew she felt latent, dormant chakra flare in the weakest attempt at killing intent she'd ever felt behind her as one of the guards approached from behind and a soft rustle as he moved to draw his weapon-

Trusting her body to know how to move, barely even needing to command it by now, Sakura moved like lightning. A sudden swift whirl and before he could even reach his sword Sakura was moving. Sakura decided in a split second not to kill the man, instead retaliating in a quick flurry of movements she leaned on her knowledge as a world renowned medic and her understanding of chakra pathways and points: it was nowhere near a Hyuuga's ability, but she managed to cut off his chakra use by deadening and muffling the signals along his nerves and chakra pathways to achieve a similar effect. What followed was a hushed silence as, barely ten seconds after he’d ordered it, the soldier (or guard) that had moved to test her strength knelt on the ground, his arms spasming helplessly, gazing up at her in shock, his sword still at his waist, the entire room full of people staring in sudden fear and awe.

Sakura released a wave of killing intent, powerful enough to metaphorically reek, before damping it just shy of causing panic. Then she leaned down and gently pressed on his points again, reversing the blockages. Any Hyuuga would have laughed at how clumsily it was done, but for someone that didn't have the gift of seeing the pathways, she was pleased with herself. He shook his hands intentionally now, once, twice, and then stared up at her again before performing a low bow and unbuckling his sword, holding it up to her.

Sakura stared in confusion for a moment, then cast her gaze around the room for help.

“What does this mean?” she asked, turning then to Daichi.

“It means that he owes you his life; he recognizes you as the better fighter, and offers you the right to decide whether he should live by his blade or die by it. It is tradition that when a formal fight is begun this honor is given, but in this instance it is because he is - we are - all awed by you. I have never seen such a fighter.”

Sakura nodded, quietly, and drew the blade, causing loud inhales hissed through teeth, protests swallowed; he must have been well liked. Then she extended it towards him, raised it slightly… and sliced one cheek ever so gently, just enough to draw blood before sheathing it again. It was a precise cut, just on his jawline. Then she leaned in and kissed the cut where the blood welled so as to hide the use of chakra, and wiped the droplets away from her lips as she pulled away, leaving no trace of the wound but for the tiniest scar.

“I return your honor with a mark of mine for a reason, and I hope you will not take it badly. My people believe that anyone that leaves a scar on you and yet lives is worth respect, and I hope to earn the respect of all that face me in combat. If you ever choose, you may come to me for training, should I have enough time in my days between working metal and fighting for Himura-sama.”

The assembly stared at her openly, none of them quite sure what to make of her or her strange healing; the soldier rose, a steely determination in his eyes, and he nodded.

Sakura turned back to Daichi and bowed to him again. “I must request simply that you do not use me as a weapon in wars you could not otherwise win. If you are taken by storm suddenly I will do all I can to defend you regardless of whether it’s a war, and I will fight in skirmishes and against bandits or thieves or assassins, but I will not take sides in political maneuvering or be used as anything other than a deadly shield. Is there a blacksmith in this town I may apprentice with to earn my keep outside of fighting?”

It took a moment, but Daichi gestured to Kei.

“Take her to the blacksmith. Inform Ishikawa-san that he has a new apprentice. Ask Muramoto-chan if she’d set aside a room for a newcomer, let her know that I’m willing to fund the first two months if she requires payment.”

“Yes, _Otōsan_ ,” Kei replied, bowing, before turning and gesturing for Sakura to follow. As they left the building, he gazed at her briefly, impressed, and murmured, “What a strange water you are, Shimizu-sama,” and from the honorific and the tone Sakura knew two things: Kei was impressed, and that she should also be wary of him from this point on. Kei left her outside the blacksmith’s with a nod and a short explanation.

“Muramoto-chan runs an inn in the centre of town, you can’t miss it. Ishikawa-san would rather hear you ask to be his apprentice for himself rather than believe he’s being ordered into it, as my father would leave him to think. He will determine whether you have the merit to be one.”

Then he was gone, and she turned to the blacksmith. Though she had no idea how to really make anything with metal, Sakura knew she would have to learn if she wanted the tools she knew so well, kunai and shuriken and senbon, for even with the most caring maintenance they would eventually be useless; and if she could sell weapons such as that, and use them to train people, she could… well, she wouldn’t do anything that she thought could ruin the balance of life in these lands. But if she were to find this place unfit, she could take the knowledge learnt here, and become self-sufficient; and if self-sufficiency wasn’t enough she could form her own team, and while she had no dreams of anything so grandiose as a legion of shinobi, she had no idea where life here would take her. The nature of a kunoichi was to always be prepared for any need… and shinobi needed comrades. It was lonely being a warrior; you always needed either a cause you believed in or comrades, and Sakura had neither.


	2. Chaff from the Wheat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura learns the basics of metal-pouring and gets ready to prove herself.

Ishiwaka-san was a broad man, all corded, knotted muscles rippling with every move as he hammered red-hot metal. His eyes were hidden behind slightly dark-tinted goggles, of a fashion; either the lens were tinted by manufacture or by smoke. If it were inside, Sakura was sure the noises would echo unbearably loud, but as there were no walls to close it in the clanging clash of metal on its half-formed kin was tolerable. 

Sakura wasn’t sure at first how to proceed, but as the man grunted and brought his tools to bear on the metal, she decided to stand resolute, quietly observing from just outside his workspace, waiting for him to acknowledge her and to decide when he was finished this part of his work. For all she knew, metalwork like this might be as delicate as surgery in its own right, and she was sure it would only harm him if she distracted him unduly-- what if he reached for the metal and instead of the tongs that held it, closed his hand tight round the cherry-red blade?

Eventually, a soft, sweet voice, surprisingly mellow and clear for the man (Sakura admitted to herself that she was expecting rough raspiness) cut the silence between the reliable sure beat of his hammer’s strokes.

“You’ve more sense than most,” he hummed quietly. “Let me ask you a question. Why do you think it’s red hot, right now, and not white-hot?”

Sakura paused at the question, unsure why he asked, and then shrugged one shoulder artlessly. “The hotter it gets, the closer it gets to melting,” Sakura answered, drawing on her knowledge of science. “The whiter, the hotter. And that looks like it’s already in the right shape, for the most part. You’re just…” she paused, not knowing the terms. “Doing fine details, I think? Or fixing something that the shape itself couldn’t give it. Right?”

Ishiwaka didn’t respond, instead choosing to lift the metal up in the tongs and submerse it in a bucket of water, which immediately hissed and spluttered angrily, sending steam and droplets into the air. Then, he laid the tempered metal on his anvil for later and lifted the goggles from his eyes, resting them on his forehead.

“Hm,” he grunted, and Sakura grew nervous at his silence regarding her answer. “You’re here to ask for teaching, aren’t you? For all that you’re good at hiding it, you have a curiosity about you I’m used to seeing from apprentices, not that I’ve taken one myself.” 

Blushing as his dark eyes flitted to hers, Sakura nodded quietly and bowed.

“My name is-”  
“I don’t much care yet,” Ishiwaka interrupted her. “I’m sure you know my name already. No, I’d like to see why you think you’d be worth being my first apprentice. Grab the metal.”

Sakura hesitated. “With all respect, sir,” she said, and frowned. “I’ll do as you ask if you believe it to be the best thing for me. But I know nothing of metal yet and I won’t pretend to know it, and I don’t want to ruin your-- blade?”

Ishiwaka nodded quietly, thoughtfully. “Right. On the workbench over there, I have a pair of extra gloves. Might be big for you, but I’ll run you through a basic pour and see how you do.”

Sakura hastened to obey, looking for the gloves and for a spare pair of goggles; she found both, though neither were in the greatest condition, and put them on. There was even an over-large apron like his which she donned, grateful for his clear habit of keeping spares. That done, she headed back to him again, eyes wide behind the goggles as she saw what the setup he wanted her to see was. His forge was a big thing, with room on the side to heat metal for hammering next to an anvil; the front, as she now observed, had a hanging pot inside with a spout that, when tipped, would pour into a metal trough which ran over a bed of burning coals. There was a pot for collection on one end and space for either another pot or a mold on the other, and an option to block access to one or the other with clever use of little metal plates; additionally, there was a well with different levels that one could block off using more of the plates, which led to the runoff pot.

“Here, I work with raw ore, as well as scrap metal,” Ishiwaka explained. “We use tools here to separate the good, clean metal from the slag, which is mostly useless for a blade but can be put to use or recycled into other things. Some smiths will use slag and worsen the blade for a profit, but I will not allow it here.”

Sakura nodded. “I can’t see the reasoning for poisoning your own work. It deserves respect; I can already tell this is something that takes a lifetime to master. I just hope I can learn enough from you to make my efforts more than child’s play, Ishiwaka-sensei.”

He gave her an odd look at the honorific, but dismissed her statement mostly out of hand as he gestured to the contraption that would help separate the slag from the metal. 

“The slag is less dense, generally, from the metals we use-- I use iron most often,” he explained. “And it takes more heat to melt the metal. I run slag through multiple times to make sure all the metal has been taken out. I’ll do it first, and then I’ll have you try.”

Sakura nodded, and he gestured to a set of bellows on the right of the forge. “You can watch from there as you work them; too much, and the fire will be too hot. Too little, and it won’t be hot enough. I will tell you when it is hot enough to melt the iron.”

With that said, Ishiwaka withdrew the pot inside the furnace (earthenware, she noticed) with a long hooked metal stick and filled it with a few chunks of ore the size of her fist and a few smaller nuggets. That done, he used the tool to hang it back inside of the furnace. Sakura took that as her cue to begin working the bellows. It was harder work than she expected, and she refused to cheat and use her chakra to enhance her strength, for multiple reasons: secrecy and wanting to be strong enough of her own merit were two of the good ones.

Five minutes in, Sakura was breaking a sweat and her fingers were trembling; pumping harder at the bellows, forcing herself to give her all, how on earth was this--

“Good. Keep at that level, and it should only take a little longer.”

Reassured, Sakura kept trying despite the ache in her chest. This was _much_ harder than taijutsu. When Ishiwaka finally consented to let her off the bellows, she was breathing hard and pressing a hand against her side to dull the ache there, one eye closing involuntarily out of exhaustion and to avoid the sweat dripping from her brow as she watched a master at work. Truly, Ishiwaka _was_ a master, she realized; for even without chakra to guide his actions, even without knowing how to use chakra to infuse the metal with more strength and stability, or to separate the chaff from the wheat with the instinctive knowledge of one’s surroundings that the active use of one’s life force imparted… even without all that, Ishiwaka poured the metal beautifully, with a skill and efficiency that would take her breath away if she wasn’t already winded from her stint at the bellows.

Once the metal was done collecting and separating, he skimmed the slag off from the iron and sent it into the runoff chute, while the rest was sent towards a second pot to cool. The slag he re-poured, twice over, extracting each tiny drop of iron, until the slag was sent one last time to cool in the pot. Sakura was impressed by the man’s endurance as he ran through both repours himself, working the bellows as easily as though it was breathing. The good metal he sent back into the forge, and he put a mold at the bottom for an ingot. Just as she’d finally recovered her breath, Sakura was sent back to the bellows to heat the iron; she glanced over now and then as she worked, watching him put the slag away and dump it onto a small stone table with raised edges. Then he returned and, once the metal (she assumed iron, but really she didn't know for sure) was melted once more, he waved her off and poured the metal through to the mold while she did a light stretch and tried to regain her breath. Though she always stretched and exercised in the morning to keep fit and limber, Sakura decided she could use a bit more limbering in this line of work. If he kept her around.

“Alright. Now you know how it’s done. I’ll work the bellows and keep it at the right temperature, but you’re to do the rest on your own. The ore is over there,” and he pointed at a few different crates full of ore and what might have been chunks of slag.

“Choose and begin,” Ishiwaka commanded, and like a good soldier, Sakura went to the crates without question, considering them quietly for a moment. From what she could see, they seemed relatively the same; except they had different colorations, and some of them felt… stronger… to her. Deciding on one, the kunoichi went to the furnace, using the hooked tool to pull out the melting pot, and was careful to keep it on the end to avoid injury from the still-warm pot. Filling it about three-quarters full, she presented it to him with a question.

“Will this be enough to fill the mold?”

Ishiwaka glanced into the pot and hummed before nodding. “I have a mold it will fill, but add another three of the thumb-sized nuggets. You chose a good amount to avoid overfilling, but sometime it’s better not to assume that it will all be good metal.”

With a quiet nod, Sakura obeyed his orders and carefully hung the pot in the furnace again before putting the hooked tool back in its place on the wall (hanging on a rack with other tools of the trade), standing back to watch it. From this side the heat as Ishiwaka worked the bellows was hard to handle; her skin felt overwarm, like she was in a sauna, but also baked in the heat, a cross between a flush and the wave of heat from an oven.

Sakura waited for a few minutes, observing the pot; from its position one could see into it from outside, and once it began to melt she unhurriedly retrieved the hooked tool from the wall where it belonged, and tilted the pot-- just enough to look inside and see whether it was the same white-hot metal her teacher had poured. It wasn’t, so she retreated and waited, observing. Ishiwaka said nothing the entire time, simply working the bellows and waiting. That’s when it hit her: this test was entirely up to her, and she would get no input or corrections. If she wasted his metal it would be her fault.

Swallowing her nervousness, Sakura steeled herself before checking again to see if it was ready, and this time, it seemed to be, so she poured it into the metal trough. From there it was a matter of placing the hooked tool back on the rack and waiting for the slag to finish separating so that she could skim the unwanted slag from the metal, and it wasn’t long before she did so, unwilling to let the metal cool to the point of solidifying in the well. After all, it would be easier to run the slag through again because iron was caught in the slag than to clean the iron out of the well. That done, Sakura sent the iron on its way to the collection pot, and started transferring the slag back into the furnace.

That was when she noticed that Ishiwaka hadn’t stopped at all in his efforts at the bellows, though he was a bit slower and gentler than she had to be; because by not stopping, all he had to do was maintain the heat rather than build it back up over and over, and Sakura felt like slapping her forehead in realization. Something of her recognition must have translated itself to Ishiwaka, for he sent her a smirk in return, before she hurriedly went back to checking on the metal in the furnace.

By the time she finally finished running the slag through (she did it twice more than Ishiwaka did, even though the levels barely lowered the last two times, just to be safe), Sakura was sure that a civilian would have been exhausted, and she would have been close to it if she wasn’t used to long fights. Endurance training was her friend, here. At long last, she collected the slag pot and, with a look for confirmation (which Ishiwaka nodded at) she poured it out on the other side of the stone table, attempting to guide it to avoid letting it combine with the other slag pour, as she knew they might be different metals. That done, she returned to put the metal back in the furnace for the last pour, this time into a mold which Ishiwaka provided; he’d shown her before the iron ingot mold, but she knew nothing this time about what mold it was. Not that it was truly important to her.

Finally, when all was said and done, he whisked the mold away as he had the last one and waved her over to the stone table with both sets of slag on it.

“There are not so many uses for slag,” he said, “But it is still sold at a profit if one knows what to do with it. It can be sold to glassmakers, where it is chipped and melted and mixed in with whatever it is they use to make glass. I am not a glassmaker, so I am not informed on this matter. It can also be ground into powder to use in ceramics as a glaze. Here, I chip and grind up slag for them to expedite their work, which they appreciate and as such pay more for it of their own volition. Some slag is more commonly used for glass, some for ceramics glaze. I will teach you more on the different metals and what their slag is good for later.”

Sakura watched intently as he worked with the cooled and now solid iron slag, chipping off some of it with a sharp hammer and scraping the rough chips into a pail. Then he ground a bit of her slag with something like a pestle and dusted the powder into a second pail before turning to her.

“Do the rest, and I’ll return to look at it.”

Sakura nodded and took over, carefully chipping the iron slag, doing her best to avoid chunks that were too much larger or smaller than the average that Ishiwaka had produced. Once she was done, she carefully scraped it into the same pail he’d used for it, and set it aside before grinding the slag she’d produced into the finest powder she could and sweeping it into its respective pail.

It was hard work, and it took her the better part of an hour to do it. Once she was done, she carefully made sure there was no dust on her gloves from the slag before taking them off and placing them on the workbench just for a moment to rub at her face lightly and take a breather.

“Reconsidering?” Ishiwaka said as he returned, only half out of the doorway to his home.

“Hmm? Oh. No, I’m not,” she hummed, stretching once more. “I just needed to take a breather. I finished with the slag.”

Ishiwaka turned and walked over to it, evaluating it, and then took the buckets inside before coming back out with a wrapped package.

“Take off the rest of that gear, then put it back on the workbench and go home,” he announced, and Sakura flushed and bowed before scrambling to obey, figuring she’d done something wrong. She moved to leave before he tsked at her.

“Silly woman. This is for you. You’re to rest for today, as you’ve worked hard and your body likely isn’t used to it despite your strength. Come back tomorrow, bright and early. Make sure you eat something hearty, you’ll need it.”

Sakura swallowed her initial protests _she was a medic, she didn’t need to be told how to take care of herself_ and then she bowed deeply, silently thanking him for caring.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Ishiwaka-sensei,” and she took the package before heading to the inn for food and sleep. Surprisingly, it was late evening, though the sun still lit the world around her well enough for her to think it might be earlier while under the awning of the blacksmith’s workshop. A far cry from the early morning it had been when she’d first arrived in Himura-sama’s lands, for certain.

Reaching the Inn took a few minutes; while Ishiwaka was close to the centre of the town, he wasn’t close enough to be part of the noisy babble that seemed to accompany the town square, which Sakura now noticed was full of vendor stalls and merchants quietly, respectfully hawking their wares and townsfolk gossiping and laughing as they walked through. From a distance she read her alias on a few lips; Shimizu Mao was quickly becoming the centre of many rumors, it seemed. Sakura put a rest to her people-watching long enough to locate the inn after a few moments, having grown restless. It didn’t take long for her to head inside, wondering at the blatant irony at a springtime cherry blossom, or an equivalent thereof in name, staying at the Kamu Shimo, an inn named for a biting frost. If she didn’t know any better, she’d assume that the Himura lord intended her to take it as a warning for her death.

It brought a fierce grin to Sakura’s lips as she shut the door behind her, surveying the clientele (a rough sort, all men and with scars and leers as they took notice of her) and coming up with the conclusion that the man intended her to be intimidated. It didn’t take much longer than that thought for Sakura to see Muramoto-san, ask her for a room, deposit her things there, and summarily return downstairs for a good meal and sake. Sakura was met with a plate with plain rice, anko dango (which was unsweetened but still surprisingly similar to the dango of her time), some sushi almost overflowing with seafood, a small amount of daikon and carrot, and some grilled poultry shredded into a tiny pile at the edge of her plate; this was rarer to see in a common inn meal, let alone for free, as poultry was eaten less in her time after buddhism had really taken root; though poultry wasn’t taboo under buddhism, red meat was, and as an extension people tended to prefer seafood to either. It was curious to her to see it, assuming it was more common than in her time, and a nice touch. A part of her was simply glad that they hadn't put red meat on her plate, as she wasn't sure how she would have reacted.

Shortly after she finished her meal, Sakura was pleasantly talking to a terrified innkeeper, who couldn’t stop staring at the room full of unconscious, mostly unharmed men and broken furniture; one of the men had come up to her, leering at her and assuming she was a paid woman by the cut of her clothes, and when she punched him out his comrades had taken offense. Eventually Sakura smiled and reassured the woman that the lord had said he’d take care of it if Muramoto-chan required payment for the broken furniture, before heading up to her room with the shark-like grin still lingering at the corners of her mouth.

* * *

Sakura heard nothing from Himura-sama the next day, and so she assumed that her bold streak had gone without retaliation for now. Perhaps this was because the man had grown to understand that a woman that could, unarmed, take out the majority of his fighting force without drawing blood on any of the most ruthless fighters and even then only as bruising and mild cuts, all without harming an innocent civilian… was not a woman he would care to cross.

The gift from Ishawaka-san lifted her spirits immensely as the pink haired kunoichi opened it at dawn; it was a metalworking apron, gloves, and a pair of new goggles, all in good condition and vaguely in her size. He must have gone out to purchase it while she’d been working on the slag, and she gazed at them happily as she did her morning stretches. Because she didn’t yet trust the town to leave her alone (after all, there were doubtless those who would hold a grudge against her after last night), Sakura donned her pack and her usual attire with her new blacksmithing gear on over it before heading outside to do her usual exercises; she’d not leave a stitch of her belongings alone longer than necessary.

An hour later, she was brimming with energy, and hungry. Not wanting to have to talk to Muramoto-san yet, because the woman had by now likely gotten over the shock and moved into anger, and because she had no money to her name, Sakura headed into the forest near the village and decided to hunt: wild game was also more acceptable in her time than the meat of a domesticated animal, so it seemed right to her. It took very little time for her to find and kill a few squirrels, clean her kills, and cook them over a quick fire. In a way that Sakura hadn’t felt since she was a young child, she felt… free. Living off of the land without harming anyone, working towards her own ends, and able to cut and run at any time if she really desired… knowing that there was nobody on their own that could stop her from chasing her own happiness, Sakura fantasized about running off and turning her back on everyone else, building her own home out of wood and rock and thinking on how proud she would be of the products of her body.

Once she finished eating, Sakura carefully smothered the embers of her fire, burying it under soil without any fuel and camouflaging the remaining dirt pile to keep it from being discovered out of habit. Then, she headed back to town, back to Ishiwaka-sensei and the learning and doing, the rough instruction and leading that the man used calling to her in a way that test-taking and memorization never had despite her skill with it. Rough, showing her what she needed to do, and then letting her truly make her own mistakes and discover her own way to do it rather than forcing her into a template that didn’t fit her. That was something she had already fallen in love with about the teaching style of the blacksmith.

“Welcome,” Ishiwaka said mildly as Sakura approached and waited for his recognition, smiling warmly.

“It’s good to return here, Ishiwaka-sensei.”

“Shimizu-chan, was it? I heard you had an exciting evening.”

“Yes, it was unfortunate, but it should prevent any more misunderstandings about me based on my clothing.”

“I see. You don’t have money to go to a tailor’s, do you?” he asked pointedly.

“Well,” she said, frowning. “No, but also, the style of clothing here is…” and she sighed. “It’s hard to move in. I will need new clothes eventually, but I might end up needing to make my own, in order to be able to fight as Himura-sama will require of me. I suppose that’s another set of lessons, eventually, if I can’t find someone that I can trust to make high-quality clothes out of specific materials without cheating me or altering my design past making sure it functions.”

“You’re over-thinking the details,” Ishiwaka admonished. “You needn’t do it yourself. I have friends that would be willing to assist you. Once you learn enough about metalwork for your work to be elegant as well as functional, I will begin selling it for you under my name to test the reaction from the market. Then you will begin using part of your pay to buy your own ore and make your own things here when you aren’t helping me, and show me your skill that way. And…” he paused, and gazed at her; he seemed to think better on what he intended to say, and instead shrugged before saying something else. “I expect you to learn well.”

“Yes, Ishiwaka-sensei,” she bowed, nodding fiercely. “I will learn to the best of my ability.”

“You can put your pack over there,” he said, pointing to an empty corner of the shop. “It’s smart of you to bring your important things with you. The town tries to be kind, but you are stirring up drama. They would likely be scouring your room for information now that you’re gone.”

“I was afraid of that,” Sakura agreed, and then adjusted her blacksmithing gear once her pack was safely out of the way. “What will we be doing today, sensei?”

It didn’t take long for Ishiwaka to have her work on the bellows, teaching her through doing the way the rhythm worked. Learning that she could work less feverishly and still achieve the same result, especially if she didn’t stop working them, had truly made a difference- endurance, something she’d worked on for much longer than her natural, chakra-less strength, was much more her style. Slowly but surely, over the hours she spent that day working the bellows to the demands of her rough but sincere teacher, Sakura learned a balance and cadence that felt _right_ in the depths of her soul. They were still working with iron, and it was clear that even as masterful as Ishiwaka was, he worked much more quickly with someone to work the bellows for him.

At lunch, Ishiwaka waved her off of the bellows and gestured for her to take a seat before disappearing into his house briefly. Then he returned with food and water for the both of them, which Sakura grinned at him gratefully for before carefully placing her gear on the workbench so that she wouldn’t get make a mess with it. 

“Itadakimasu,” they chorused together quietly before eating, followed by “Kampai,” as they both raised their glasses for a salute. Even though she was delicate about it, as any shinobi has it drilled into them to do when on duty (for who would trust a shinobi that is slovenly or unclean; even Chouji, who loved food so well, would be polite; Naruto was the only exception she knew, and even he was at least somewhat clean about it), Sakura metaphorically tore into the bowl of miso soup and plate of sushi. When she was done, she neatly laid her chopsticks across the dish.

“Gochisōsama deshita,” Sakura hummed at the end, followed by Ishiwaka’s agreement in the form of repeating her words once he finished his own bowl of miso soup. “That was delicious, Ishiwaka-sensei.”

“Not at all,” he dismissed, though she thought she could detect a slight blush on the cheeks of her otherwise stalwart teacher as he gathered their dishes and took them back inside. 

Sakura donned her working gear again, cheered and invigorated by the good meal shared with her teacher (and the insight into his personality), and took her place by the bellows as Ishiwaka-sensei returned.

* * *

That evening and the next morning followed a similar outline, though this time there were no hiccoughs in the sense of being approached by anyone that didn’t treat her with respect. Muramoto-san wasn’t angry with her, anymore, as apparently Himura-sama really had footed the bill for the furniture, with a little extra, as the innkeeper cheerfully informed Sakura, although she did request that if the blacksmith’s new apprentice needed to fight again that she please avoid the new tables.

“Of course,” Sakura had laughingly agreed. “No more broken tables.” At the time, she’d taken note of it for future use, intending to keep the promise.

All memory of the fact was wiped from her mind when, just after settling in to work some more at Ishiwaka’s shop (“We usually work with more than one kind of metal,” he’d said, “And today, since you learned the rhythm for iron so well yesterday, we will be learning copper-”) Kei approached the shop and cleared his throat.  
“Shimizu-san,” he said loudly, in a tone not unlike an order, which caused Sakura to whirl like a whipcrack to face him, gaze steely.

“Lord Himura-sama needs you. A messenger arrived with a warning- other villages have learned of your presence and strength. One of them has taken it upon themselves to strike at us now, hoping to catch you off guard, rather than wait for you to be proven in battle. Roughly twenty men, armed as we are, and of similar caliber, are approaching us.”

Sakura nodded, fiercer now, and turned to Ishiwaka.

“Sensei, I am truly sorry for this interruption. May I leave my working gear here while I deal with this?”

Ishiwaka considered her for only a second before nodding. “Your lesson can resume whenever you are ready,” he agreed, and as soon as she finished bowing her respect to him, Sakura grabbed her pack, and left her goggles, apron, and gloves on the workbench in a neat pile. Kei didn’t seem impressed by the time she’d taken to do so (only a few moments, jeez), but he certainly was when, after asking him which way the soldiers were convening, she leaped up to the roof and began jumping from roof to roof at a rapid pace before running through the town square, adeptly avoiding civilians.

Leaping in front of the group of soldiers, Sakura made a textbook-perfect three point landing before straightening and nodding to the soldiers.

“Who’s in charge?” she asked briskly, only to turn as a slightly older man approached her, expression stern.

“Right. Keep your men back. Only move in if I retreat or if I’m downed,” she said, both order and request. “I need you to understand what you’re working with, and even then I probably won’t be using my full strength, but you won’t be able to command me properly in the future unless you know my abilities. What are your usual policies-- do you take prisoners? Let them go?”

“We leave them to deal with their own wounded near the border of their land,” the general spluttered, “But you can’t just order me around, you--”

“Listen here,” Sakura said, flooding the atmosphere with killing intent. “If your ranking system had a rank high enough for what I am, you would be outranked six ways to sunday. I am to you what you are to a newborn in terms of danger. You would be helpless against me in a fight, and while I don’t have time to prove it right now, I’d be happy to oblige once there isn’t a battle I need to fight in imminent.” At that, she pulled the killing intent back under her skin, smiling cheerfully. Her true concern was that their men would be injured by the attackers, but she didn't say as much, knowing it would injure their pride. “Take a chance on me this once; tell Himura-sama that I broke ranks if it goes wrong. But I need to be out there without worrying about whether I’ll accidentally injure or kill your men.”

The general wasn’t cowed by the fear he _had_ to be feeling, as civilians and even soldiers of their type could rarely spark killing intent of the kind she’d just unleashed on him; and Sakura’s estimation of him rose even as he nodded roughly and sighed. “Fine. Just don’t blame me when you get slaughtered, woman.”

A few minutes later the marching of soldiers was audible, and Sakura turned to face the men that were approaching the village. It wouldn’t take long for them to learn that Haruno Sakura-- _er, pardon_ \-- Shimizu Mao was a force to be reckoned with, and that so long as this village was under her protection, they would be foolish to attack it.


	3. Fighting, Steel, and Grit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death is a bell tolled in the hearts of those who didn't go.

As the subtle, faint vibrations of men marching towards her made themselves known to her feet through her shoes (shoes that, as any shinobi’s, were made to be sturdy yet thin in the middle, to allow vibrations to be felt despite the mild muffling nature of them), Sakura raised her chin defiantly and walked out about fifteen meters, leaving the soldiers to stop approximately five meters from her. One of the soldiers (such as they were, dressed in an odd type of armored yukata, swords and high collars and sharp shoulderpads) stepped forward, frowning.

“A woman truly does defend Nakashi, then,” the soldier sneered. “Pathetic. You have one chance to step aside before we end you on our way to speak with real soldiers.”

“You’re right,” Sakura said sweetly, “I’m not a soldier. I’m something worse altogether. Please do try. I can’t guarantee you’ll survive, but I’ll do my best to heal any fatal wounds before I leave you to be dropped off at your borders. I won’t bother with boo-boos, though.”

“Boo-boos?” the soldier repeated, confused. “Speaking nonsense _and_ insane. Very well.” He drew his sword, and a heartbeat later, so did the rest of his company.

“Be glad I allowed you to draw your weapon, such as it is,” Sakura laughed. “The last time someone tried to draw against me, they didn’t get as far as this.”

Irritated by her confidence, the soldier lunged forward. His movements were clumsy compared to the shinobi she knew and was impressed by; slow, clumsy, and weak, without the clean, cold efficiency of grace and the lifelong struggle to maximize conservation of energy. Any good, true shinobi knew that you were only moving quickly and cleanly enough if you were constantly refining how much you could do with the least amount of effort.

In comparison to the teachings of her kind, this man was a three year old child waving a stick above his head wildly. Sakura knew _exactly_ how to cow him and teach him a lesson: she caught his sword between her hands, palms pressed together, holding it still; she enhanced her grip with what was to her the barest thread of chakra, using her ridiculous levels of chakra control to lace her hands with a hair’s breadth of power.

Her opponent didn’t realize at first what she’d done, until he was reduced to shoving and pulling helplessly, eyes wide as he tried to recover his sword, only to slowly let go and back up.

“ _Akuma_!” he yelled. “Monstrous creature, what _are_ you?!”

Sakura only smiled, proceeded to break the sword in half over her knee, and tossed it to the side (with a thought to collect it afterwards, along with the rest, to see if Ishiwaka-sensei could use the metal for anything and to see what kind of standard he’d judge them against).  
“I am Shimizu Mao,” the kunoichi replied, baring her teeth in what others might mistake for an even wider smile. “Fear me.”

He charged her as his company stood in shock, and she grabbed his arm, wrenching it behind his back in a short series of loud, staccato snaps, and kicked him to the side where he lay whimpering. It was the only way to spur on the rest of her enemies, and they came like a flood. One down.

Iruka’s voice whispered in the back of her mind, followed by Tsunade’s; _never let yourself get surrounded_. Though these were basically civilians with sticks, the advice rang true. Too many stab wounds, too many of them in a horde, and even she might succumb. So she was careful as they rushed her, darting to and fro, daring them on. As she made use of the _shunshin_ to appear behind them in little poofs of smoke, confusing and redirecting them, she punched here, kicked there; she barely used any chakra at all, because on a certain level her ethics screamed at her that the use of a jutsu on them would be criminal, and that treating them as the honed, nigh unkillable shinobi she once fought and fought alongside would be like giving a two year old a knife and telling them to run with it. Even as they fought her, they did not _understand_ , and so she needed to make them understand. It might take ages to do it, fight upon fight upon fight, and every newcomer would need to be taught yet again; but she would hammer the lesson into them instead of recklessly wasting and throwing away lives.

So, the battle continued as such: Sakura whittled away at their confidence by raining blows upon them, just enough to bruise and smart, over and over, while appearing wherever they least expected her to be. It was a wild goose chase, and they were rather stricken by a lack of morale as they fruitlessly attempted to chase and attack her, tripping over themselves, all as they listened to their leader groan and sob, clutching his ruined arm.

Finally, as they began to tire and realize the foolishness of their mission, she began to finish the game of cat and mouse.

She punched one man in the stomach hard enough to wind him and send him to his knees, then smacked his head with the heel of her palm, using her innate knowledge of the human body to knock him out with the least amount of trauma, careful to lead his company (reinvigorated through outrage that she’d summarily dispatched yet another of them) away from his still form to prevent trampling. Two down.

Yet another she kicked in the back hard enough to send him windmilling away, and she resisted the urge to use the cheap kick (because she didn’t want him permanently damaged or unable to sire children simply because he’d had the gall to follow orders blindly). Instead, she used a low-level genjutsu to make the group believe she’d disappeared again and strangled her target just long enough to knock him out, too, and put him down near his leader and comrade. Three down. 

Cancelling the genjutsu that held seventeen men in a run towards a tree, Sakura stood quietly, contemplating them, as they wheeled around artlessly and came at her. There was fire in their eyes, but also resignation, and it would almost be like one of the cartoons Sakura had watched growing up if it wasn’t for how sad it was. There was no pleasure in this fight, and she suddenly, desperately felt a wave of homesickness; she closed her eyes for a split second to fight back the wave of nostalgia and nausea, only to reel in surprise and open them again as one of the men, suddenly bright-eyed and triumphant, shoved his sword into her abdomen.

Truly, the blade wasn’t as sharp as it should have been; and the sharpest part of the blade was the edge; he jabbed and lunged and pierced, but with a blunt point. Sakura imagined how she might have reacted when she was younger, and it was a grim smile that came over her face as she shoved him back, forcing him to take the sword with him. Without even a thought, her chakra began to heal her; the wound in her abdomen glowed faintly green as the gaping wound closed before their eyes, visible through the hole torn in her shirt.

“Good try,” she hummed. “Unfortunately your technique is off, and you only scored a hit because I thought of home. Don’t try to pretend you can kill me,” and she snapped both of his arms like twigs just because she could. Just because she was a medic didn’t mean that Sakura didn’t have a vindictive streak when someone _stabbed_ her. Four down.

At this point, the men were largely defeated. They stood still, giving mild resistance as she walked among them, using her knowledge to incapacitate them, as non-violently as possible, until the last of them… fell to his knees and lifted his sword above his head.

Sakura repeated the gesture and speech she’d made the last time this was offered her, and healed the cut on his cheek before sending him into unconsciousness with a gentle flare of chakra. Then, despite her earlier promise not to bother with ‘boo boos’, set the bones she’d broken on both the leader and the one who had injured her, and used a brief flare of chakra to heal them so that they could still pursue meaningful lives, rather than be crippled. After all, she doubted medical science was very advanced in these days, at least when it came to dealing with arms broken in several places.

The leader stared up at her fearfully even after she’d finished, eyes wide and tearful.

“Why?” 

Sakura smiled gently, and it seemed to startle him. “My name is Shimizu Mao,” she repeated quietly. “I am worse than any of your soldiers, or any soldier in any other land. I know power you do not, and I do not wish to fight, but I will defend against any threat. You saw how I move, and how I react, and that I can fool the senses, disable a soldier with a touch, and heal. There is even more that I can do. Spread the word, soldier-san. You and yours will return home safe. I will ask that you spread the word so that those who are too foolhardy to take note will learn the lesson before I grow too bored to let those I face go without permanent injury.”

Frowning, the leader of the enemy soldiers nodded once, twice; she disrupted his chakra enough to send him into sleep and clapped her hands free of dirt and blood before heading back to the village with their swords in a bundle, looking… unsettled. As though she had found nothing of triumph, and only of disappointment and loneliness.

“Thank you, Shimizu-sama,” the general murmured. The soldiers present, who would have fought and bled and perhaps died in her place, bowed to her before slowly taking up the threads of their duties, corralling the men she’d defended from and taking them home. One of them, however, paused, and shook his head.

“Shimizu-sama,” he said quietly. “Please do not take their swords. It is a mark of dishonor and failure to lose one’s sword, and not only is it a bad omen for those who steal them, it is an instant demotion for the one who loses it… if they’re lucky. Often, the one who loses their sword will die by another, or at best be left to beg for scraps in the village.”

Having no wish to destroy their lives, she reluctantly handed over the swords. “Give them back, then; I can’t tell whose is whose.”

Haruno Sakura made her way back to the blacksmith, a weary smile tugging at her lips as she saw Ishiwaka-sensei.

“Ishiwaka-sensei. I’m sorry that I left. I’m back now.”

Ishiwaka hissed in his breath through his teeth as he looked at the hole in her shirt, the blood that stained it and her skin.

“Are you injured?” 

“No, sensei. I healed myself.”

Ishiwaka’s incredulous look prompted a small, dry chuckle as she pulled a kunai from her pack and sliced across her palm deeply, ignoring the discordant thrill of pain that raced, fire-hot, along her nerves. He reared back in shock, and she shook her head, putting the kunai away, and then her hand began to glow in that soft green light so familiar to her.

Wiping her hand off on her shirt, glad now that it was red instead of something else, she extended her hand to him again and his brow furrowed at the sight of clean, unbroken skin.

“Incredible,” he said. “Not even a scar.”

“Not even a scar,” she agreed. 

“Put your pack away. Then come inside and wash; I’ll be serving lunch in a moment, and then we’ll get to work.”

Something about his calm acceptance soothed her, and Sakura felt her shoulders untense, not having realized her body was still on-edge until it relaxed. She washed up; he brought out food; they said nothing until they were done, at which point Ishiwaka whisked away the dishes and she readied herself to get back to work.

* * *

Over the next few days, Sakura found both pairs of her standard outfit growing… threadbare. Worn. She hid it as best she could and grinned cheerfully regardless. She was shinobi; she was _kunoichi_ , she had dealt with worse… and she had metal.

Slowly, she worked the rhythms of the metals into her blood, feeling it deep inside as something _right_ and _strong_. She learned the tempo and strength needed for iron, for copper, for steel, for all their alloys; she learned pouring, slag, and more. Her days were full of metal and ore and sweat and exhaustion, and for every bit of labor learning she did to teach her body the motions, there was a mental component, where he taught her how ore looks and feels, how to recognize good metal from impure, what the metals looked like, what they were good for, and how to best utilize the molten drops of pure metal she coaxed from the ore with the blazing furnace-forge.

In a way she hadn’t since becoming a jounin, she felt _alive_ , with the same love of learning and dedication and thrill of discovery she’d once thought would only apply to her fierce devouring of medical knowledge.

On the tenth day of her apprenticeship, Ishiwaka waved her closer.

“You’re not staying at the inn anymore,” he huffed. Sakura’s expression darkened.

“What do you mean, sensei?”

“I mean that I cleaned out a spare room. You’ll be living here. The inn is no place for you, and you’ve been stifled, having to live on your back whenever you aren’t sleeping.”

He made no mention of the traps she’d taken to leaving outside her door, and she didn’t either. In silence, she nodded.

“Thank you, Ishiwaka-sensei.”

“Seiichi.”

Sakura blinked. “I… thank you, Seiichi-sensei. I am in your care,” she returned, bowing and trying not to let her throat close up. His name suited him well, for sincerity was something he didn’t lack. Sometimes a man of few words, he only spoke when it suited him, and that tended to be when he was imparting advice or giving meaningful input. With her, it happened somewhat often, though she’d seen him by now with clients, and sometimes they got less than three words from him.

None of them had ever been given clearance to use his first name.

“You might call me Mao, as well, if you pleased,” Sakura hedged, wanting to reciprocate.

“I might,” Seiichi acknowledged without promise. “Now, it’s high time you learned how to use an anvil. A mold is a mold, it gives the metal shape. But molds are imperfect at best… you must learn to sharpen a blade, to refine the shape, to make it _shine_...”

As she listened to the hidden passion of the man drip into his words like a warm honey, thick and slow and proud, Sakura adjusted her apron and tried to suppress the corners of her lips for a single beat before she relaxed and grinned; for there was no one to see but her sensei, and he would not misunderstand her smile.

Hours later, her arms would ache desperately from the strain as she dared not use chakra to enforce her hammer’s blows; too much and she would destroy the blade she worked on. It was a small one, to start her out; and one she’d poured the steel for. It was also the first successful trial for her chakra infusing.

_Sakura remembered the two ruined blades that had come from the mold, and he’d looked at them in confusion and distaste at the odd bubbling and twisting and scorch marks in the cooled metal, staring up at her._

_“What have you done to them, Shimizu-chan?” he asked, using the honorific to reassure her._

_“I… was trying something. Sensei, the reason I fight and heal the way I do is because I know how to use my chakra… let’s call it life force. It is the energy all things have, but only few can harness. Where I am from, the blacksmiths mix it with the molten metal, which makes it stronger and more durable, and when someone like me wields blades made that way they can use their life force to make it even more powerful… and I have been trying to figure out how to do so myself. I’m sorry for ruining them. I honestly thought it might work,” and there was a hot feeling around her eyes, like she might cry._

_“Then let us do this properly,” he said, and there was no arguing his tone. He returned shortly with several improvised molds, big enough to hold a muffin’s worth of metal._

_“We will test in smaller batches, with iron first. Then, once we figure out what you need to do to make it work with iron, we will see if you can adapt it to steel and copper.”_

_That was the first time she actually touched Ishiwaka, in a warm, chaste, and extremely brief hug._

_“Thank you,” she’d said, and she had meant it with every fiber of her being. She still meant it even after the multitude of tests, the rigorous mental training and note-taking it took her to understand how much chakra was too little, and how much was too much. From there it took more time to find the right amount: she ruined at least ten ingots worth of metal on iron alone. Still, the look of wonder on Ishiwaka's face when he saw the first blade he'd made by repouring the infused iron was worth it._

Sakura smiled down at the blade she was working on as her arms trembled with exertion and she tried to catch her breath. It was finally more or less the right size and shape for a kunai, except it was curved and edged on both sides; the tang was long and had a ring in it, something she’d had to work hard to accomplish. Seiichi gazed at it curiously before nodding.

“Not what I expected,” he said, “But it seems good. Is that based off of one of your weapons?”

Sakura shrugged. “Kind of? It’s… I think there was a type made like it, but this would be only be viable as a close-combat kunai. Throwing it would be much harder than the standard. I would have made the standard kunai, except, well, I don’t know how, so it just turned into this.”

“And what is the standard kunai like?” Seiichi asked.

Sakura wordlessly produced one of her kunai, still in good condition, and sighed. "It doesn't make for easy reproduction," she sighed.

“May I remove the wrappings on the hilt to make a mold?” Seiichi asked. “It would make it far easier for you to produce them.”

“Of course, sensei. Thank you.”

“Not at all. It’s getting late. Leave your important things here, and go collect anything else from the inn. I’ll get your bed prepared.”

A warm feeling of belonging bloomed in her chest, and Sakura left to comply with a warm thrum of feeling. _Home. I have a home._

* * *

Seiichi was no different once she began to live with him, though being in his house meant that she picked up on a few more things about his life. First, he was a widower; a small altar in an alcove near the one for the house spirits had a picture of a woman and a daughter that looked like him in it, and incense burned in both daily. Sakura did not make offerings at either, for it was not her place, though she knelt in acknowledgement to the house spirits each morning before her exercises out of respect.

Second, he was warm, though closed off. He respected privacy and boundaries, and would only knock once at her door at the morning if he needed something or if she overslept her usual time, and he never spoke of his family or his past. She didn't pry.

Third, he was generous. He would give of himself to her in small ways: an extra couple of ryo that she didn't earn if she was struggling to get things in order, if she ever wanted more food or drink all she had to do was look in its direction and she had it; and he shared all of his ore and metal and tools with her.

Weeks passed in a general warmth and contentedness rivaled only by a scant few memories from Konoha. Sakura would fight for Himura-sama, routinely shredding the yukatas she was forced to buy, further shredded by her exercises. Spars with a clone kept her sharp, though she had to restrict herself to only hitting the clone with her chakra re-inforced blows, as ninjutsu would likely panic the populace. Once done with those, she would run through all of her skills in at least one demonstration of each broad field: throwing kunai, using ninja wire, making traps, using her chakra, using jutsu when she was extremely sure nobody was around... she slowly but surely made a small clearing into a training ground, and meticulously cleaned up after herself. Whenever she wasn’t called away on that duty, or exercising to keep all her skills fresh, she would live in Seiichi’s home, learning his craft, and throwing herself into it wholeheartedly. He was impressed with her learning curve and gave her new material whenever she started to seem bored, until she had learned the core concepts and only needed to work on fine details.

Three months into her apprenticeship, Seiichi had said would likely end soon unless she wished to keep on afterwards, seeming as if he knew that she would never need to be a master, only a journeyman. Sakura had gone to bed, murmuring that she'd like to stay with him for ever, as he reminded her of her father. Though she didn't notice, Seiichi had gone to bed with a teary smile that night.

The next morning, she woke to her meagre belongings packed into a large, but not bulky, backpack with a sleeping roll attached. With a frown, Sakura opened it and found nothing missing; even her blacksmith gear was inside on the top. There was still room in the pack (though she didn’t rifle through it she knew all her belongings were present) and there was a bit on the bottom of the pack for her kunoichi gear to be clipped onto it, which is where the belt of pouches was currently hanging.

Then Sakura noticed, on the desk that had once been Seiichi’s daughter’s, was a note and a parcel.

“To Mao-chan” were the only words on the note. Sakura opened the parcel only to find several outfits. One was an elegant kimono, in a deep flowing green with an intricate silver trim and design, which she gasped at and quickly folded off to the side; the soft pink obi went with it. Below that was a soft pink yukata with a green-blue obi oddly reminiscent of her eyes, though she didn’t notice the resemblance. Below that were no less than five different outfits that took her breath away. It was similar enough to her current outfit in style, for there were overshirts of different hues of green or, in the case of the last two, red and pink. That however was where the similarity ended; there were undershirts of a dark brown with a hard fabric she didn’t recognize as a padding outside, protecting her without restricting movement as it wasn’t present at her joints or anywhere her body would naturally bend. Her skirts were more like sarongs, imitating the idea of a kimono or a dress without actually restricting movement in the least, and there were leggings, like a second skin, made similarly to the underskirts. At the bottom of the pile were a pair of shoes similar to what she was used to, thin-soled yet with admirable treads for friction, thick on top and almost like a modern combat boot with an open toe. It was honestly more than touching; she knew without needing to guess that he had spent an inordinate amount of money on her.

Carefully packing everything but one of the new outfits away, Sakura put on her new gear and sighed as she felt it. Undoubtedly durable, but also soft inside, so comfortable that she barely even noticed the feel of the fabric on her skin. Perfect. 

Shrugging on her pack, Sakura flipped over the note, and her warmth and sense of belonging shattered.

_There is a reason I have given you these gifts, and there is more in your pack, but I urge you to hurry, and to destroy this message when you can. Himura-sama has grown paranoid with the whispers of his son in his ear. Later today he will arrive to demand you either marry Kei or that you die. He has poisons and his men will be around you, and if you are here, he will take my life if you defy him. He is already here to collect me, but gave me time to tend to my forge and put away my ores. He did not suspect that I would be so bold as to give you this note, or that I had already been prepared. He values my work too much to kill me if you are not here, but he would do it to gain control over you. You must not let him._

Sakura’s heart sank, and she headed out into the kitchen. She already knew that the forge was long cold, that there was no dormant chakra here; she was alone.

A small bag of coins lay on the table, along with a bento box, and Sakura swallowed her sorrow to unshoulder her bag long enough to put both within it. The note was ripped up into tiny shreds and tossed into the forge, deep in the back, where nobody would find it and it would be ignited once Seiichi returned, and she wrote one of her own, quickly.

_Thank you. For everything._

Then she placed the note in his (to her, very old-fashioned) oven, knowing he would find it eventually, and did her best to sneak out of the village without a single person learning she was there. It didn’t take much; mild genjutsu, chakra suppression, and a henge; but all the same she breathed a sigh of relief as she escaped.

Looking back at the village, Sakura winced as a man’s scream of anguish echoed in the town, and she closed her eyes in grief as the gifts in her pack weighed on her heart like a stone.

She had known what might happen, and what Seiichi would lay down for her despite not knowing _why_ ; she knew he would die, but like him, she had been blindly optimistic, hoping against hope that he would live when she was found missing. Still, like any shinobi, she would not waste what had been given to her. Turning her face to the sun, she fled, resolve hardening in her heart like the metal she’d grown to love, her mind stuttering as the death of a man who had quickly become one of her precious people threw a curveball at her.

“No more,” she whispered into the wind as she leapt from branch to branch. “Not a single person more.”

Three days after her departure, though she would not hear of it for a long, long time, the village went up in flames. Her protection had been the only thing that had kept the village from harm once her fame had made it a common target. Kei Himura and one of the guard assigned to him were the only survivors.


	4. The Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isolation is not always a bad thing. Just remember not to avoid others on purpose.

It didn’t take long for Sakura to find herself hopelessly lost. The terrain had changed dramatically through the years, reshaped by shinobi and war and regrowth. Several landmarks didn’t exist as of yet, and others existed when they wouldn’t in the Land of Fire Sakura was used to. As a result, instead of returning to Konoha as she’d expected to, Sakura found herself in the middle of nowhere. Avoiding settlements and signs of civilization was her main goal: if Sakura was going to do things right, considering that she was in the past and things were already coming to a head that would lead to wars (if she wasn’t mistaken, she was a ways before the Warring States period judging from the fashion of the last village), she was going to have to found a village herself, bring it to power, and set it up to be ready to take its place in a position of power once the time was right. Perhaps she’d even be able to use the jutsu Tsunade taught her to live long enough to steer it into that change. More, she’d need to rearrange things so that the Daimyo was not a consideration, because she would not stand for a village she made being vulnerable to such things as Konoha was.

Hopefully, she could make a village in which she could live quietly outside of her duties, have the respect of her peers, and keep her peers safe. Perhaps she’d also be able to define Kunoichi for the ages, and prevent the underestimation of them: yes, civilian women would still be underestimated, and should be, for the kunoichi to be able to use infiltration tactics when they must. Kunoichi though... They should be feared.

With that in mind, Sakura steeled herself as she jumped out of the treeline onto the coast, staring out across the ocean. There was an island she vaguely thought might be Uzushio in the distance, with a flurry of movement across the water; she had to squint hard to see it though, and there were no boats. With a dispassionate shrug, Sakura shifted her gaze away (for she felt no chakra: if the movement was people, and if those people were more than genin-level, she would sense their chakra, burning bright yet faint; a skill that often sent her reeling in Konoha unless she kept it tamped down, only using it when absolutely necessary or outside of the village).

Testing her chakra levels, Sakura nodded once to herself and cracked her knuckles. Time to see how far she could get: with a leap forward, she channeled the finest trace of chakra to her feet, using the bare minimum to keep herself afloat and running quickly: pumping her arms unlike she once might have, for she realized long ago that holding one’s arms behind only increased the force necessary to hit the same speed. Before, she’d had other shinobi to look at her funny for trying this. Now, she didn’t.

It took her almost an hour, just before she was worrying about whether she should turn back, of intense running, leaping, and mild chakra use, to see islands in the distance. Sakura was sweating at this point, but she tugged on the endurance training and memories she had, gritting her teeth and forcing herself to go faster, harder. The kunoichi would reach the islands, and begin what she had to do; and once she had herself set up, if there were no others on the islands, she would bring others to her after scouting them out in the mainland. Certainly nobody would be able to follow her here, so she almost hoped there would be no resident population.

Still, making this trip would get her in shape in a hurry if she wasn’t already, as when she finally reached the shore she collapsed, unable to walk it off, and huffed helplessly.

Maybe she should have walked the last bit.

* * *

After a day’s recovery lounging on the shore, eating food from her pack, Sakura decided to explore. The island she landed on was large and thickly forested, with two mountains in the middle of approximately the same size, with plateaus instead of peaks. The plateaus were uneven, and judging by the surrounding terrain at the bases, it seemed as though an avalanche had toppled them halfway. It would serve as an excellent vantage point, and as it would take chakra use to climb the mountains, it would be safe from enemy civilians for the most part and enemy shinobi would be detected fairly easily, especially if there were guards posted around the sides of the mountain looking down.

Yes. This would do nicely. All they’d need to do would be to construct a wall in the middle of the forest, perhaps made of sections of glass so that it would be a transparent barrier: with the proper use of seals and chakra in the creation of it, as well as a chakra-metal mesh in the middle, it could be disturbingly hard to break and still allow for visibility. Some guards on that, too, and… well, Sakura was already having some amazing thoughts on the matter.

Heading up to the plateaus atop the mountains, Sakura scouted them out and nodded to herself. If the mountains were hollowed out a bit at the top, and the village built in and atop the mountains, supported by them, it could be quite grand and almost as big as Konoha. 

“I’m going to make this a place of strength,” Sakura declared to the mountains, feeling a little silly, but saying it anyway. “I want this to be a place of strength and safety and love and trust and cooperation, a place of honesty and a place where corruption is not possible.” 

She paused, considering, and knelt to stroke the mountaintop, such as it was.

“You are an island, an entire island and two great mountains. There must be powerful spirits here, if not spirits of your own; I hope that I can earn your blessing in my endeavors to keep the world in balance by creating a bastion of all the things that people should be for each other. I swear that so long as I am here, so long as I am allowed to lead anyone I bring here, I will not wage war needlessly. I will participate in battles only to protect this place and to keep the rest of the world from being destroyed by the greed and stupidity of others, and to protect the balance of life as best we can. We will fight each other here only in the name of honing our skills, and if a participant draws blood it will be a mark of shame to actually harm a peer. I will do my best to keep our life here balanced, to make sure that we do not take more than we must, that life here is sustainable. You have my word, and I hope that I will be able to earn your trust and your loyalty, as you will have mine.”

At that point, Sakura moved over to one of the more uneven patches on the gigantic plateaus, a point that seemed almost like a natural altar, and drew from her bag some incense. Lighting it and wafting it in the air, she carefully used a chakra scalpel to chip a small hole for the incense to sit in and placed the stick in it before relaxing and taking a few deep breaths.

Despite how silly she’d felt, talking to the land around her as if it was alive, as a sudden feeling of warmth entered the air (almost as if it something had silently been judging her until this point), and she could only remember the ancient tales of spirits. For hadn’t there been, long before household spirits, spirits of the land as well, from the times before Shinobi and civilians alike had broken those spirits?

With a sudden spark of thought, Sakura gently laid her hands on either side of the rock ‘altar’ in which the incense now burned merrily. Closing her eyes, she tried to sense chakra. In the normal sense, she found nothing, and frowned… until something made her try to tweak her attempts, looking for something other than the specific pinpricks of activity she’s used to sensing for. After all, she wasn’t looking for people-chakra, just… _oh_.

The mountains suddenly stood out in stark relief in her mind, full of a deep, old chakra, dormant and unusable, the trees swaying gently in the light winds that whipped her hair around, the entire island… asleep, but _alive_ in a way she’d thought wasn’t possible even as she treated it as such intuitively.

Swallowing hard, she attempted to match her chakra to the frequency of that old, natured chakra, and sent a friendly pulse into the natural 'altar' that was part of the mountain.

The resounding clang, like a gong, of the mountains responding and wakening blinded her mind’s eye and Sakura passed out.

* * *

Sakura quickly came to the conclusion that she had imagined it. Shortly after waking, she’d stared at the rock beneath her feet and done everything she could to assess the mountains. Sensing their chakra, talking to them, dispelling genjutsu, anything she could think of, she did, save for doing anything that could be interpreted as hostile.

Not a single thing worked. The mountains were resolute, unyielding, and, maddeningly, _exactly_ as they had been when she first reached the island, save for the remaining incense holder she’d carved into the ‘altar’. It was almost as if whatever she'd found had never existed.

Very well, then. Sakura sighed, shook her head, and gazed about the area. “First order of business, then… a temple. Then a house for myself,” she said, nodding to herself and the mountains… and then paused. “No. Not a house for myself. Just a temple, makeshift, easy to dismantle, and a house for myself and the first inhabitants together ne, mountain-sama? And I should find a name for you. For this place. That way when I bring people here to form our village, I can have experts, real builders, do the work. You can be appropriately honored, then, and I… can have a small home that doesn’t leak or have insects, and bring offerings to your shrine in respect and do my best to protect you and the rest of the world from us in thanks for living on your back. That’s something I want, by the way… for you to, if you are aware or powerful, remain that way instead of having your spirits crushed under the weight of people being here.”

A thought struck her, and she was suddenly reminded of how people had once whispered about Uchiha Mikoto, family matriarch, and the way that Shikamaru’s mother reputedly ran the house. Strong females, in positions of power, even if they didn’t run the entire clan. Only an outside influence had ever brought them misfortune under Mikoto's watchful eye. _”Female recruits,”_ she whispered to the mountain. “What do you think? Female recruits, kunoichi, allowed to train in anything they want so long as they do it well… if they wish, they leave the village after a certain age or rank, to find someone that can defeat them in battle… then if they, and their opponent of course, are agreeable, bring them back here to be married and to settle down in the village and become part of our lives, hoping to sire a strong female heir. A matriarchy. Only females inherit leadership, but they have to prove themselves as eligible through hard work… the ones that bring life into the world, the ones that endure pain to do so, the ones that are the most liable to care about that life as a result… taught to be strong and fierce and fearless, given the tools to survive and the mindset to rule with equality and care with both humanity and nature in mind. What say you?”

A soft breeze fluttered through Sakura’s hair, and there was no breeze afterwards to whisper through tree branches.

“I’m not going to be freaked out by that,” and then the kunoichi seemed to realize she was still talking out loud. A dangerous habit.

Daily quota of weird, silly, impractical, and obviously superstitious talking to nature apparently filled, Sakura turned her mind to food and to the other nearby islands. Having travelled a long way the day before, the kunoichi was still recuperating from straining her reserves so much: but after a good meal and some more rest, she should be capable of scouting out the other islands, as they were rather close together. If she found any inhabitants, she’d be able to see about recruiting some of them as civilians. In the meantime, she could head down to the forest, try to find some deadfall, and make a quick and dirty double lean-to to shelter the altar from the elements. Hunting in the meantime wouldn’t be too unwise either, nor would finding some safe berries.

Eventually, she succeeded in retrieving both food and resources, setting up protection for the altar, and sleeping. Dreams came after took up a somewhat comfortable sleeping position under the meagre shelter, the last of the incense perfuming the air and filling her thoughts of Seiichi’s quiet whispers to his long-gone family, and then a soft, joking rebuke aimed at her before he tried telling her something. She couldn’t make out his last words, however, and when she asked what he had said, she woke.

* * *

Sakura, the so-far strong and graceful kunoichi… was soaked. Literally soaked in water, from head to toe. As soon as she left the island, she’d overestimated how much chakra she’d need (what a thing, for the girl with chakra control possibly the highest Konoha had ever seen from one of its civilian-born kunoichi, let alone its regular shinobi; able to avoid the tell-tale chakra smoke that came from chakra wastage in henge and shunshin techniques and coat her body with chakra if she so chose) and then, after she came up for air and tried again, she realized that in all actuality her chakra reserves had been _forcibly increased_. That was the only way she could describe it; for her reserves were nearly half again larger than they had been. This was an enormous feat for her, despite it making her reserves only about two thirds of a regular jounin’s. She’d had to scrimp and scrape for ages, carefully mastering each of the few jutsu she had, streamlining each action so that her minimal reserves would take her farther and faster with no excess… and yet... her reserves were suddenly much larger than a single day of chakra reserve training could explain, skewing her control as a result. Sakura turned back to the mountain with wide eyes, her lips moving in a silent question, before she shook her head and turned back to the water. The kunoichi would have to learn to adapt, then, and wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

It took her three hours to regain her steady, iron grip on her chakra use, and it took another twenty minutes for her to narrow her fine control further. Once she was sure she had adjusted to the amount of chakra she now had, that chakra eager to rush out all at once, she prepared herself to try again. Sakura sighed in relief once she’d learned the trick of it, but now that she understood what having so much was like, she suddenly felt a fierce understanding of Naruto’s poor control. Having so much battling to do as it pleased was tiring; so much easier to guide a steady trickle into a thin, razor-sharp, carefully designed flow than to do the same with a raging river.

Steadily jumping along the water, Sakura headed to the nearest island, which also seemed to be the largest. Exploring that one was almost hell; where her island had been warm, almost, this one was nearly hostile. Branches were whippy, and she had to learn how to avoid having them snap back at her face if she brushed them aside, for they did so with far more vicious eagerness than the majority of tree branches she'd encountered in the past. Brambles scratched angry welts against her legs and arms, and even heading to the top branches of trees didn’t help; the canopy was so thick it was hard to maneuver in. Finally, Sakura called it quits, after a slow and painful hour and a half checking most of the big clearings. There was no sign of humans here, and she stopped at the shore to bow to the island and apologize for the intrusion before leaving, just in case.

Over the next three days, Sakura found that the islands were completely deserted, and her grin was fierce. Empires could be founded here, but what the kunoichi valued most was simply the isolation, the fact that it was a good way from anything else. Returning to the top of her mountains, she sighed and relaxed, smiling. Tomorrow, she would head back to the mainland and see about finding some civilian women, preferably somewhat young but adult enough to know what they want and listen, preferably single, and most importantly of all, with significant chakra compared to their peers.

* * *

It took Sakura a while to get back to the mainland: having learnt her mistake the last time, she took the journey carefully rather than rushing it, especially with her larger reserves. As a result, when she got there, she had a quarter of her chakra left, rather than being close to having none. This cheered her immensely, and she headed off on her way back; carefully, she marked trees with her chakra to blaze a trail only she would see, leading back to her travel point.

Then she was off, searching for the nearest town. Which… honestly took longer than expected. By the time she thought she found a single trace of a path, the kunoichi was exhausted and needed sleep, and it was well into night. With a sigh, camp was made, a perfunctory dinner eaten, and she fought off the ache in her body with the need for sleep, which… didn’t work for about half an hour of restless tossing and turning.

When Sakura woke, it was with a twitching eyebrow and a slurred “What the hell?” as she rubbed at her eyes and tried to figure out what she’d dreamed about that confused her so badly. When the answer didn’t come, she shrugged and broke down her camp, hiding the traces of her presence and following the path she’d stumbled onto when she made camp. 

_What luck,_ a part of her mind murmured, and she paid it no mind as she ran, hoping to find a town before the next day. If it was too long a journey, even with her abilities and advantages, she might not be able to evade anyone that might come after her and her charge.

With that thought, Sakura paused to evaluate the pros and cons of using a henge. Her reputation wouldn’t follow her if she did, which meant that any claims she made wouldn’t be recognized. She might not be listened to. However, if this village claimed she kidnapped a woman, it might make it harder to find another.

Then Sakura laughed, Seiichi’s words coming back to her: _You’re overthinking the details._ Very well: she’d do it until it caused trouble, and _then_ she would employ measures such as a henge.

Heart lighter despite the bittersweet quality of remembering Seiichi’s admonishments, Sakura kept going at a ground-eating pace until the shapes of buildings made themselves visible through the trees. Then Sakura stopped, only to jump down from the trees and run that way. 

The stares that met her when she leaped into the ‘town square’, as well as weapons drawn, reminded her of the guarded way people had stared at her in Konoha once she’d proven how strong she was, mixed with the defensive track Nakashi employed.

“I apologize if I have startled you,” Sakura said humbly, bowing low. “I come in peace to resupply, if your merchants would be so kind as to trade with me. I would also enjoy hearing gossip, if your womenfolk would be interested in swapping tales. My name is Shimizu Mao, and I do not attack towns unless they start the fight. I specialize in defense.”

A few of the weapons lowered, and then a woman walked up to her with a smile.

“Hello,” she said, “Everyone here calls me Yoko-chan. Pleased to meet you, Shimizu-chan; our leader is absent today, but I am cleared to speak for him until he returns. Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to our traders and escort you, so that everyone feels more at ease.”

Sakura smiled and nodded, bowing again. “Thank you, Yoko-chan. It’s a pleasure to meet you as well,” and her eyes gleamed in happiness as she followed Yoko, but her gaze was observant.

Yoko’s chakra reserves were large, and though she’d clearly never used chakra actively for jutsu, she’d intuitively learned how to use it for small things. What, Sakura didn’t know yet, but she was impressed nonetheless, and irritated as Yoko was underestimated by those who interacted with her as they walked. 

Yoko would be her first genin, if the woman agreed. With any luck, she’d find a builder as well.

“What kinds of merchants are you looking to trade with?” Yoko asked. “We’ve got little to sell, but if you have a specific need…”

“Food, mostly,” Sakura said in response. “Some survival gear, if at all possible, and some tools for building and repair. I’m looking to build a house. Do you know anyone that knows how to build? Some tips would be priceless.”

Yoko laughed. “Why-- yes. My brother builds houses from time to time. That’s one of his,” and she gestured at a fine house that made Sakura’s brows rise in appreciation.

“Phew. Beautiful work.” A part of Sakura filed that away… Yoko and her brother, if she could bring both back with her, would be worth taking. Family would be fine to bring, since it would still lead to the same result in the end, and they’d need more people than not eventually. And the men would simply be treated the same way as the women, going out to find their match. It would work.

As Sakura shopped and gossiped with Yoko, she prodded gently to see what Yoko’s stance was on the village, by saying she’d had men underestimate her, and asking if Yoko had a similar experience.

“They underestimate me too,” Yoko agreed. “Only Hansuke doesn’t, but he’s my brother.” Then she paused, and sighed. “I just wish I was… I don’t know. Less… womanly,” and she shrugged a shoulder artlessly. “I want to be special, compared to the others, somehow. More capable, instead of having to do things from the sidelines.”

“You want to have something to underestimate,” Sakura said, “Instead of just the regular abilities that women can have?”

Yoko turned startled eyes on her, and Sakura gave her a calm gaze in return.

“I’m a kunoichi. Yoko, do you know what a kunoichi is?”

“No,” the woman responded. “No, I don’t.”

“A kunoichi is a warrior woman, capable of doing things a regular civilian would call godlike. They can heal, or kill, in seconds, using their very life force to alter the reality around them as they please.”

Yoko’s eyes widened. “But… kill?”

“Yes, but only when it is absolutely necessary,” Sakura hastened to reassure her. “Shinobi, that’s both male and female, whereas kunoichi are women, are honorable. They do not seek to kill unless their opponent already wants to do the same to them, and even then, they prefer to incapacitate rather than kill. If they can end a battle without bloodshed, they will.” _I will not accept anything less from those I teach,_ she swore silently, and smiled as Yoko’s gaze turned almost starry-eyed.

“Would you like to become a kunoichi, Yoko-chan? You and your brother both would be welcome to come and learn from me. You would be free to live with me as long as you like, with no obligations to stay for long if you decide the life I lead isn’t for you. I don’t have a house yet, so the only thing I’ll ask in return for teaching you both will be for you and your brother to help me build a guest house for the two of you and then one for myself. If Hansuke doesn’t wish to come, he needn’t. I’m willing to teach you with or without him helping.”

“I… yes!” Yoko gushed, enthusiastic, but Sakura held up a hand.

“Keep in mind that kunoichi life is different, much different, from the life you may lead now. You must wear different clothing, in order to move properly. You will ache in muscles you didn’t know you had, and if you aren’t ready to drop because of the physical training, the exertion of using your life force will do it. You will be tested in harsh ways, and the reality is not as easy or fun as you may think it would be, for once you are a warrior you are always a warrior.”

“I don’t want to be a delicate flower,” Yoko said, eyes narrowing. “I want to be treated like a person, not like a woman, Shimizu-sama.”

With that, Sakura smiled warmly.

“Good. Gather your things, up to two bags full, and if you convince your brother, get him to pack the same. I’d suggest at least one pack full of things like blankets and bandages and food. Think practicality, what you would _need_ in a survival situation, and base your packing off that. We’ll be able to trade for anything you must leave behind. Then meet me on the path out of the village tonight at midnight.”

Yoko’s gaze was full of determination as she nodded, and Sakura turned to head back to the path with a smile, only to stop and look back at the girl.

“Be safe, Yoko-san. You’re my student now. If you need my assistance getting out of the village unseen, whistle like a bird if you can; I will be there, but I have faith in you.”

Then Sakura left for real, and she grinned wildly. Things were coming together; she resolutely turned her back on the little voice in her head telling her that it was too easy.


	5. Sea foam and serf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killing is not the hard part. Killing is easy, far too easy: life is too fragile, too willing to be cut down. It's dealing with how easy it is to kill that's the hard part.

Meeting with Yoko again had led Sakura to kill, but as she rested her forehead against the altar of the mountain and whispered to it, a hand pressed lightly against her shoulder in reassurance.

“Thank you,” Sakura sighed, “But I should have done… more.”

“It’s been nearly a week, Shimizu-sama,” Yoko said softly, “even if you were asleep for part of it. Things are going well, you said so yourself. Things are… looking up.”

Steeling herself and taking a deep breath, Sakura nodded sharply in agreement. “Aa, you’re right. I just… I feel the blame of all of it rests on my shoulders. I’m the kunoichi here, Yoko-chan. I should have stepped in, somehow, before it got to the point where I’d have to kill.”

“So prevent it next time,” Yoko sassed, “you hardly went into it with a concrete plan. Heck, look at how you got us here. If it wasn’t for the canoe you’d have ferried us over one by one. Just… get your behind over to the fire. The island provided meat, just like you said; it was easy for us to find clams and small wild animals, enough to sustain us without causing any issues,” and her voice held reverence in it as she, too, lit a stick of incense at the altar. “Thank you, spirits.”

Sakura smiled at Yoko, pleased with how the concept of caring for the island and living in harmony with it had already taken root, a reverence and respect bordering on religion without being anywhere near as fanatical. A simple acceptance and trust.

“Yes. Let’s go,” the pinkette agreed, standing and turning to discover what they’d cooked.

* * *

A bad imitation of birdsong, late at night, rent the air and Sakura sighed inwardly before dropping out of her tree, silent as a gentle breeze, and ran towards the call. What she found was awful; Yoko had been beaten, and a group of men were surrounding those that had clearly packed to leave.

“You,” a man roared. “You organized this… this theft?”

“It is not theft if a person wishes to leave their town and take their own belongings,” Sakura replied coolly, “though it’s against most laws to beat a person without provocation, isn’t it?”

“But this is everyone that keeps this town functioning! You have stolen my people!”

“Again, untrue. I have not stolen them; they asked to come away with me. They’re not property, either, that you can own. Moreover, if these people are so integral to the functions of your town, perhaps you should’ve treated them better, so that they didn’t feel the need to leave.”

“Everything was fine before you came along, you… you tricked them into wanting to leave!”

“Yeah right,” and Sakura was beginning to feel irritated, crossing her arms and inspecting her nails. “I didn’t need to do any such thing. If I wanted to, I could trick you into leaving, but that would be an abuse of power. No, what I did was talk to them like _normal human beings_ , saw how unhappy they were, and let them know they could always leave if that’s what they wanted. They asked to come with me, and I said that was fine.”

“So you admit it!” the man crowed, and Sakura glared at him. “No. How dull are you? You know what, if it’s a fight you want, just come at me already.”

“No. You’ve damaged these people too much… they’re the ones that will be fought. We’ll teach them their places again. You, however… you’re officially banished from these lands. You won’t be allowed here again. Leave.”

Sakura grimaced as she realized that this man had essentially planned this so that if anyone witnessed what happened and left, it would be reported that she’d been the aggressor; anyone that learned about this would banish her from their own lands as well, and she wouldn't be welcome anywhere. Others would outcast her, and she would never have such an easy time of recruitment again. Anyone associated with her would be treated the same. If she wanted these people safe, she would have to kill the men, and prevent any of the citizens from being hurt at the same time. Genjutsu seemed like the best option... but even with the little to no resistance these men had, her genjutsu hadn’t been trained enough to take all of them out of the fight before now, so she’d have to be careful.

“Alright,” she said softly, before casting a genjutsu on them. As predicted, she only managed to ensnare ten of the twenty people present. The man closest to her wasn't one of those ensnared; a kunai to the throat quickly solved that problem, and she had to fight the urge to freeze as she heard a scream from the civilians. Instead, she leaped over them to the other men as some of them broke free due to her broken concentration. Sakura began killing efficiently, quickly, taking advantage of the fact that some of the men were busy following the orders they'd likely gotten beforehand, having been told to start killing the people she'd come for if she didn't leave peacefully. Ignoring the civilians now that they weren't being cut down like diseased livestock, she moved back to the armed townspeople still under the genjutsu; Sakura whispered an apology as she sheathed her kunai, moving to use a chakra scalpel to kill them cleanly, painlessly. Each of them got an apology, and she hoped that the genjutsu she’d woven into their minds of a gentle soft morning in bed with tea after a nightmare, their last memory, would make up for the destruction she’d had to cause. These were innocent townspeople led by an awful person… this man she was not nearly as gentle with. To kill him, she snapped his neck. In a way, it was a relief not to know any of their names.

Turning back to the others, dull-eyed and frowning, covered in splashes of blood, Sakura shook her head.

“This is sometimes the necessity of life for shinobi,” she said softly. “Killing to avoid harm to others. To protect those that you have pledged loyalty. And sometimes, you don’t always succeed in preventing that harm.”

Motioning to Yoko, who was still on the ground, dazed, and to the ten dead civilians that had been hoping to join them that had been killed as Sakura fought her way to them, “I didn’t manage to protect you all in time. But I did what I could. If I hadn’t killed them, not only would you have been hurt, but I would not be able to visit other towns and find others like you, to show them a way to be powerful. If you are horrified, please understand that is a natural reaction. It is a horrific thing to have to kill, and I do not enjoy it: I do not take it lightly. If you do not think you can handle having to kill, you do not have to become a warrior. You would be free to live in the town regardless, or I can escort you to another town safely. But know that if you do choose to fight with us, I can teach you how to kill cleanly, painlessly, and quickly: and that I will never ask you to kill if it is not necessary.”

The speech took all of her emotional strength and she turned away from the civilians and the bloodshed, pressing her fingers to her mouth and closing her eyes, suddenly feeling brittle. Shoulders tensing, Sakura thought about what might happen if they decided they all hated her… 

“Shimizu-sama,” Yoko said softly. “You… _do_ still want us, right? You won’t abandon us?”

Sakura turned around sharply, surprise brightening her gaze. “What?”

“Good,” Yoko replied, relaxing, and the group started to stand and help each other up. “This is Hansuke, my brother,” and she waved to a short man that had shaved his head bald, with a kind smile and a stocky build.

“Thank you for taking us in, Shimizu-sama,” he said, “We have been wanting to leave the town but never really knew how to label the feeling we were sharing.”

“And these,” Yoko said, “are Ume, Yumi, who are good with sewing and cooking respectively; Shiori, who is good at weaving and poetry, and Ryou, who is Shiori’s husband and skilled with livestock and farming crops.” As she named them, Yoko pointed out a pair of sisters that were very similar in looks, both of whom had auburn hair and green eyes and wore dark blue kimono Ume had her hair in a long braid, whilst Yumi’s hair was pulled into a bun. Next, she pointed out a couple holding hands; the woman, Shiori, was dark-haired with blue eyes, and her husband had light brown hair and black eyes. 

“It is an honor to meet you all. My name is Shimizu Mao, and I hope to teach you a new way of life. I hope someday to found a village on this way of life, but for now it will be enough to have others share in the skills I’ve learned.”

After healing Yoko’s bruises with a careful brush of chakra, they set off towards the beach… and the embarrassing question of how to get all six of the civilians and their packs across the water. 

“Well… I could ferry you across two at a time, or we can build a raft,” Sakura announced. “The raft would be better, if we can ensure it won’t sink…”

“Er,” Yumi said, “I… have a canoe. It won’t fit all of us and our things, but if we squeezed we’d be able to fit ourselves in it. I like to fish for our dinner sometimes.”

Sakura started and grinned. “I’m glad we have a fisher among us, then,” Sakura agreed. “Alright. Let’s get the canoe; I have an idea.”

In very little time, Sakura had the five civilians sitting in their canoe and tying a rope around her waist and connecting it to the front of the boat.

“What… are you doing?” one of the women asked, brow furrowed.

“You’ll see,” Sakura said, sing-song, as she proceeded to use the rest of the rope to tie all their packs to her back. “Everyone comfortable?”

“Yes, Shimizu-sama,” Yoko said, speaking for everyone to prevent any questions. After all, Yoko had full faith in the pinkette.

With that, Sakura let her chakra flow along her pathways, strengthening her, and along her feet. It didn’t take long for her to start sprinting across the water, pulling the boat along behind her. The civilians startled and held on tight, spooked at first, but it didn’t take long for them to break out in muted chatter behind her as they asked each other if they thought they’d ever get to do that.

Sakura grinned, although by the time she reached shore she was exhausted, dropping to her knees and panting. If it hadn’t been for the way her reserves had been increased, exactly as much as she now found she’d needed them to be… well, she’d have collapsed halfway along and drowned them all.

With a grunt, she dropped their packs and untied herself, resting on all fours as her vision swam a little bit.

“Shimizu-sama, where should we set up camp? … Shimizu-sama? Are you alright?”

Sakura gestured up to the top of the mountain. “Spent too much… of my life force,” she managed. “Have to… recover.”

* * *

Waking up three days later, Sakura had made her way to the altar, bemoaning the lives she’d taken. Part of it was a calculated move on her part, to show her civilians the feelings she usually forced down and out of mind and to make it clear that killing was painful and should always be that way. Part of it, however, was also guilt. Guilt that she could so easily kill, without a thought. 

_I must teach them,_ she sighed. _I must teach them a better way than I was taught. I can’t let them be like me alone. They have to be better. Maybe… maybe that way whatever I’ve done will count. Maybe that way whatever strange land, whatever strange time I’ve found myself in, maybe that way it will all count and be worth it. And maybe that way, if this really is the past, maybe it will make Konoha a better place in turn._

Later that day, she’d talked to Hansuke. They’d taken refuge in a cave until she’d been able to ferry them up the mountain, as it was nigh impossible for civilians to scale it as it was.

“I want the first house to be large,” she said, “four bedrooms, a walkaround porch with shoji panels that can be opened up, a living room with kotatsu, and a kitchen. That should be enough for us for now. We’ll also need a bathing house, and we should anticipate growth, so we should make it bigger than it needs to be with room to expand. I also want a shrine set up at the altar. It should be big enough to dedicate space to a combined area for all spirits of this island, family and ancestors combined, so that a person can honor any and all spirits here as well; but the stone altar in the middle should be left untouched, with at least half a foot of space around it, with a soft mat for kneeling on next to it and each shrine area. Things will have to be a bit more compact than the shrines in the towns, I think; but the stone altar will be the main focus point.”

Hansuke nodded. “Alright. Let’s start talking size and placement, and then I can give you an estimate on how many materials we’ll need, and what kinds.”

Sakura nodded and started talking with him. The next day, she brought seven of the trees, almost half as tall as the mountain, up to the plateau in logs of various lengths, followed by a trip to the mainland for building materials other than wood. It took her three days to collect the rest of it, and after that, between having everyone chip in with building the house to gain muscle mass and assigning exercises, Sakura realized something vital.

She was going to have to figure out how to actually _teach_ these people.

Shit.


	6. Lesson One, and Well Begun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teaching is difficult. What one knows, one must find a way to hint at. What one has learned, one must in turn find a way to frame for others to grasp. To make others understand your own past and your own experiences, to make yourself understandable to others well enough to pass on knowledge, that is the true challenge of teaching.

It didn’t take long for Sakura to figure out that teaching was both easier and harder than her genin sensei had implied. He’d complained about the wrong things. Least of all of the things to complain about were the personalities of her new students: Ume, Yumi, Shiori, and Yoko were her students to begin with. Neither Hansuke nor Ryou had opted to learn the trade, stating instead that they were happy to work on the housing and future livestock pens. After all, someone had to do it.

Probably the worst thing about teaching was figuring out the lesson plans, when to teach what. Sakura could explain it well enough, although it was much more difficult to explain to civilians with no prior exposure to the concepts. Interpersonal things were also easy enough to work around, especially with the familiarity between the four and the fact that she was their only available sensei. Moreover, she had a group of adults. It would be better if she could have young children to teach… to introduce them to the concept of chakra and using it young, at the ages she’d learned, and teach them to fight as early teenagers, conditioning them for it in the middle of a normal, happy childhood the likes of a civilian’s…

“Shimizu-sensei,” Yoko asked quietly, “What’s… meditation?”

“Well,” Sakura began hesitatingly. “It’s a method of increasing one’s mental discipline. It’s also good for centering the self and learning about your chakra. It can also help to increase your chakra reserves, along with the exercises I’m going to be assigning you. Because I don’t think anyone is even close to being aware of our location, I’m not worried about our ability to defend ourselves yet, so I’m going to take this slowly to ensure that you have the best chances of adapting to the lifestyle with minimal struggles. If we were at war, I’d have to rush training, because I am the only fighter here and if something happened to me, I’d rather the majority of what I know be passed down, even if improperly, than have nothing passed on.”

Sakura re-oriented herself to address all four of her students. They all sat seiza style on the grass, and Sakura smiled encouragingly at them.

“Right. Meditation begins by closing your eyes and focusing on your breathing. Take deep, gentle, slow breaths, and exhale for longer than you inhale.” As Shiori’s brows furrowed between breaths and her chest heaved with effort, Sakura hastily, but calmly added, “Don’t force yourself to breathe too deeply, however; focus on whatever feels comfortable and natural while being a deep breath.” Shiori relaxed, evening out her breathing as a result.

“Wonderful,” Sakura intoned calmly, soothingly, trying her best not to disrupt the calm her students had obviously taken on. “Now, I want you to envision a desk full of paper. Imagine that you’re sitting down. I want you to imagine those papers are your thoughts and feelings and carefully, neatly put them away. Do whatever is natural to put them away; maybe there’s a drawer or another place for them.”  
Sakura waited for a few minutes as the women did as suggested, some with more enthusiasm than others; Ume’s fingers twitched and her lips quirked up into something resembling a smile, while Yumi’s expression remained still and calm.

“Alright,” she continued, “Once your desk is nice and neat and ready for you to work… and do this at your own pace, don’t feel pressured to move ahead unless you’ve completed this step, we’ll do this many times so you’ll find it easier to do this with practice… once your desk is ready for you to work, I want you to focus on your own body. Feel the way you exist within it, the way your heart beats and your breath moves in your lungs. I want you to imagine those as yet more papers, and put them neatly to the side. We’re going to be looking for your chakra. To do that, you need to focus on the feeling of vitality underneath the rush of blood and the pounding of your heart. We need to find the wellspring of life below your lungs. Most chakra, before it’s released for active use by those capable of using it, ends up stored in one’s core. So that’s where I want you to look. Imagine you’re outside of your body, looking through it, and look at your core. Try to feel and see it. If you can’t do that yet, imagine it’s there anyway, and try to envision it.”

Sakura waited quietly, murmuring words of encouragement and patiently repeating the instructions until finally, what must have been twenty minutes later, the women’s chakra flared just the littlest bit one by one… except for Shiori. Sakura would have to address her later.

“I want you to keep trying to envision your chakra. If you’re having trouble, try to focus on the way you feel when you’re scared; that sometimes helps. If you feel like you got it, I’d like you to focus on the feeling and try to guide it-- gently!-- into your right hand.”

Twin gasps escaped Ume and Yumi about three minutes later, and they blinked their eyes open in surprise as they exchanged looks and looked back to Sakura, who lifted a finger to her lips.

“It’s alright, don’t be alarmed. You’re safe and sound. Keep your focus. Try to guide your chakra into your right hand, carefully, if you’re feeling confident.” 

Eventually Shiori’s chakra finally flared, as she discovered it, and Sakura breathed a silent sigh of relief in response, even as Yoko blinked her eyes open, examining her right hand.

“Alright. Relax, and stop directing your chakra; make it a conscious effort to do so, so that you’ll never use chakra when you don’t mean to. Then I’d like you to open your eyes and, if you need to, stretch a little. Then we’ll talk about what happened.”

Shiori was the first one to get up to stretch; Ume followed her lead, and while Yumi was content to continue sitting like Sakura, Yoko stretched her arms without getting up.

“So… was that real? What happened?” Ume broke in excitedly after a few seconds.

“Yes,” Sakura replied with a chuckle at her enthusiasm. “That was using your chakra for the first time. Those that can sense chakra will be able to see that you’ve begun to use it consciously, although your reserves are still pretty low. Don’t worry if you can’t sense other people’s chakra very well; I’ve got very mild sensor abilities, so if I concentrate, I can sense the chakra around me and sometimes how much chakra is there. I’ll test whether you can sense chakra later, but if we keep going we run the risk of overloading your chakra coils. Usually we would want to start teaching you chakra control young, so that if you chose to be a kunoichi later in life you would be prepared to, and if you didn’t, you’d still have some basic defensive abilities. However, you’re all adults, which means that your chakra coils… er, the place inside you where your chakra is produced and stored, aren’t used to producing or using chakra in any capacity other than enough to simply live.”

“So we have to train our bodies to produce chakra in a way that won’t stress them?” Shiori guessed, and Sakura nodded, beaming.

“Exactly! Every morning, I’d like you to repeat this meditation and practice directing your chakra to either your hands or your feet, but until you get more used to it I’d ask you to have someone supervise you so that you don’t do it for more than two hours a day. We’ll be meeting to do this together every day for at least three weeks, but please remember to continue to do this every morning unless a day comes that you decide it is time to retire. Additionally, please don’t try directing your chakra anywhere but your hands and feet yet, as you can accidentally harm yourself if you do so before I teach you how. Your tenketsu… er, the places in your body that allow chakra to move through it, are very thin because they’ve never been used before, and sending chakra to anywhere other than your hands and feet, which have naturally wider tenketsu, can be dangerous until you’re more experienced.”

The four young pre-genin bowed to her in respect and then broke off from her, heading towards the house still under construction to join in the daily tasks of building and cooking while chattering excitedly. Sakura watched as Shiori and Ryou hugged exuberantly, Yoko started excitedly explaining what had happened to Hansuke, and Yumi and Ume drew close to quietly discuss their experience. She would be worried about how everyone split apart, except… they hadn't, really. Despite having started smaller, separate conversations, they referenced each other and spoke to each other with the ease of familiarity, and while they were nowhere close to a family yet, Sakura could see the beginnings of comradeship, the start of a shared loyalty. The start of a village.

Sakura gazed at the mountain’s altar next to her, for she’d decided it was as good a place as any to encourage meditation, and gently rested her hand against the side of it.

“It’s begun, my friend,” she intoned softly under her breath, pitched in a way that wouldn’t carry as easily as a whisper… she’d noticed that the others had picked up on her odd new habit of talking to the mountain. “I only hope that I can lead them well, and be worthy of your assistance.”

A moment later, a loud crash echoed, followed by Ume’s shout of “I’m okay!”. Sakura pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes closing, and let out a long sigh through her nose, and grinned helplessly when she noted that the mountain’s chakra felt almost… amused.

“We’ll get there… someday,” she promised, before hauling herself to her feet and jogging over to the framework for their house, laughing and shaking her head as she helped mend the damage.


	7. Her past, their future.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Konoha is troubled; Sakura soldiers on, unaware.

It didn’t take long for the news to hit Konoha. The Rookie 9 were called together for the first time in a long time, anxiously shifting their weight and glancing at each other as though trying to determine why they’d been brought together by their Hokage.

Though not all of them mourned at the news, some did: notably Naruto, who openly wept despite the broken-down communication that had driven a wedge between them as of late. Lee had grown, some, and didn’t weep as Naruto did, but it was clear from his expression that he was feeling raw grief at the loss of a good comrade. Shikamaru’s expression was hard and unreadable, shutters drawn across his face. Tenten’s fingers twitched, as though wanting to grab a weapon. Kiba absently scratched at Akamaru’s ears, hiding his reaction, if he had one at all. Neji scoffed quietly, gazing at the wall. Ino came close to joining Naruto, sniffling with a mutter of “Stop it, idiot, or I’ll ruin my makeup.”

Then Chouji opened a bag of chips with a loud crinkle, disturbing the otherwise near-silence and making Ino and Naruto jump. Shrugging unapologetically, he started munching on his snack solemnly. Ino turned to say something, but Shikamaru cleared his throat and stared her down, quelling the scathing remark she’d have made about the inappropriate timing. Ino hesitated and looked away, anger ebbing away to nothing. In her heart, she knew he didn’t mean anything by it.

It wasn’t everyday that one of the most well-known kunoichi of their generation got abducted (and, presumably, killed) without a trace on a supply run. Regardless of how well Rookie 9’s members knew her, the blow was dealt: Konoha encouraged large social circles and interconnectivity, so despite the failings of Sakura’s first sensei, she eventually grew into a respectable, well-liked kunoichi. This, paired with her warm and polite personality (which cushioned a will as sharp, cold, and unyielding as steel) meant that she was at least on friendly terms with the majority of the group.

The death of Haruno Sakura, as not even the slugs she had also contracted with could locate her, had already begun to make ripples. The next day, Rookie 9 applied for more missions than they had before, and were all the more lethal for it as their shared loss drove them farther. They took to the task of scourging Konoha of its enemies with a passion.

* * *

A week of meditation did little to turn the women Sakura had gathered into genin. It wasn’t supposed to. What it did was begin to center them, to ground them, to introduce them to their chakra in a way they’d never had it introduced prior to Sakura. Additionally, their reserves had slowly but gradually begun to increase: the pace was somewhat more rapid than Sakura would have expected, and she would give the altar an occasional quirked eyebrow in question.

On the plus side, with their increased reserves and slowly increasing control meant that she now felt comfortable teaching them something more advanced than meditation and the gentlest of forays into trying to guide their chakra. As a result, she looked through her pack and found a sheet of paper from… well, before. Carefully folding a small section off of the bottom, she tore along the crease neatly and then tore the small strip into four squares. These squares, she took into her hand, and put the rest of the paper back into her bag.

Normally, it would not be possible to create chakra paper from paper that wasn’t made from the specific type of tree that Konoha nin would imbue with chakra over its lifespan. Even Sakura didn’t know much about what kind of tree it was. However, she did know that she had chakra control in the ninety-fifth percentile at the very least. Quite possibly she had chakra control in the ninety-eighth percentile. With a deep breath, Sakura held a single square of the paper in both hands, and focused on the nature chakra that she’d sensed in the mountain before, devoid of any true element-- no, she realized, not devoid of the elements. Incorporating all of them, instead of splitting them up. It was a union. Merging her chakra into all of the elements at once (even fire, which raged and fought against her) was, to say the very least, difficult. She couldn’t quite achieve true nature chakra, but she got close enough to it that she was satisfied, and gently fed a slow trickle of it into the paper. Once it was soaked in her chakra, she halted the exercise and looked down at the paper. It still seemed normal, but she could sense a vaguely familiar sensation from it. With a deep breath, she repeated this procedure on the other three, and carried the pile over to the altar, gently resting them on it.

“Spirits,” she murmured under her breath, “I don’t know if I’ve done this correctly, but I wish for this paper to react to the elemental tendencies of my students’ chakra by emulating the affinities they have. I don’t know if you can do anything to help, but if you could give me your blessing in this, I would truly appreciate your guidance.”

There was no response, but even so Sakura remained waiting, sitting in formal seiza style, head bowed respectfully. Quiet, introspective meditation came to her as she patiently contemplated her life, and where she was in it.

“Shimizu-sama!” Yoko called warmly, jogging towards her. “Are you almost ready? We’re excited, we’ve been eager to see what you meant when you said you have a new lesson for us! Meditation is nice, but it gets repetitive!”

Sakura tilted her head back in a mixture of mirth and gratitude to the spirits of the island for their tolerance and any guidance they would give her, before carefully gathering up the pieces of paper. As skilled as she had become, there were no accidental uses of chakra on her part, but even so the pinkette was careful now not to use any as she nodded and called over the rest of the girls, who were calmly ambling over to her and chatting about the upcoming lesson.

“Alright, everyone,” Sakura began once they had all found a comfortable sitting position. “Today we’re going to learn a bit more about your chakra, as you’ve begun to learn chakra control. Knowing the hows and whys of the energy you’ll be using most in life will be an invaluable lesson. To begin with, we’re going to try to find out what your elemental affinities are.”

Yoko frowned. “Elemental affinities?” she parroted, confused.

“Indeed,” Sakura agreed. “Each person has a natural affinity to at least one element. I am strongest in channeling earth and water chakra. Raw chakra is useful in many ways, but you can mold it into elemental chakra to use it for ninjutsu, which can be very powerful, either offensively or defensively. You won’t be learning elemental ninjutsu for a while, but it’s always useful to learn your elements early. Of course, you can technically mold any element if your chakra control is high enough, but affinities make molding that kind of chakra much easier.”

“How will you test our chakra?” Ume asked, gaze sharp and focused on Sakura’s hands. “Does it have something to do with what you’re holding?”

“Yes,” Sakura confirmed. “I… have to admit I’m not sure if it will work, however. I improvised chakra paper, something from home… but it should have been made another way. I’m hopeful, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work, okay? If it fails to indicate your affinity, or affinities, it is not a bad reflection on any of you, and I’ll try to find another method.”

“Well, may we try?” Yumi asked, smiling. “I’d like to see what my affinity might be.”

Sakura went to Yumi first, and gave her the small square of paper.

“I’d like you to push just a little of your chakra into the paper,” the kunoichi instructed with a calm tone. “Just like when we meditate and you move some into your hands or feet, except I want you to envision that the paper is an extension of you and will it to go outside of your hand, into the paper. A little bit should be enough.”

Yumi concentrated, carefully holding the paper between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, and in just a moment the paper both grew damp and earthy, mixing into mud and dripping out of her hand.

Sakura smiled widely. “Looks like it worked,” she enthused, glancing gratefully to the altar with a sense of pride in her accomplishment, and that of the island’s. “Your affinities are water and earth, like me. An interesting combination. I’ll tell you all more about each kind of elemental chakra after we find everyone’s affinity.”

Next up was Ume, who rested the paper on her palm, face-up. The girl was glaring quietly at it as she concentrated, it was almost no surprise to Sakura when half of it charred into ash.

“Fire,” Sakura mused, smiling at Ume for a moment before heading to Shiori.

Shiori was hesitant, taking the paper as if worried about it, and almost dropped it as she tried to infuse her chakra into the paper. In just a second, it crinkled and creased dramatically.

“Lightning,” Sakura announced approvingly. “Between the three of you, you’ve almost got all of the elements already. You’re going to be a hell of a team.”

Yoko held out her hands with quiet confidence, gently cupping her piece of paper between them. 

Sakura raised an eyebrow as the piece of paper split into two, only for both pieces to crumble into dirt. 

“Wind and earth. Alright. Here’s how the elemental affinities work. Usually, each shinobi only has a single affinity. Two of you have two affinities, which is uncommon where I’m from. There is nothing anyone can do to increase or decrease the number of affinities they have. It is unique to each person whether they have one or two, and though there can be more than one person with each affinity or affinity combination, it is still unique to you, because you will have your own advantages and disadvantages,” Sakura coached, before retrieving the original sheet of paper from her pack. As she hadn’t attempted to make it chakra paper like the four squares that had just been used, she felt fine in using it for writing, and created a quick diagram.

“Each element is strong against an element and weak against one. What this means is that if you use an elemental ninjutsu, there is one that will overpower it and one that your ninjutsu will overpower. However, if you use a strong ninjutsu, and your opponent uses a weak one, you can still overpower theirs even if the element they’re using _should_ overpower yours. If you’re using the same nature, but yours is stronger, your ninjutsu will grow even more powerful as it consumes the other ninjutsu and uses it for fuel. If you’re using the same nature, but also the same strength, the two techniques will cancel each other out. Don’t worry if this is a bit much to learn all at once, I’ll teach you again later on when you can use ninjutsu so that you have a better frame of reference. My point is,” and Sakura pointed to the diagram.

“Lightning is strong against earth. Earth is strong against water. Water is strong against fire. Fire is strong against wind. Wind is strong against lightning. It is a cycle.”

“My paper turned into mud,” Yumi began, “And you said it was water and earth.”

“Well done,” Sakura praised. “Yes. Some elements can be combined to create a secondary release, one that can be stronger than the originals if you use it right, though some of them are a result of a kekkei genkai, a bloodline. The non-bloodline combinations are water and lightning, water and wind, fire and lightning, fire and earth, and finally fire and wind. Yumi, you have water and earth. Ume, you have fire. Shiori, you have lightning. Yoko, you have wind and earth. This means that if you want to create powerful dual-nature attacks, Yumi and Yoko can use earth alongside Ume or Shiori. Yoko can use wind alongside Shiori or Ume. Yumi can use water alongside Shiori or Yoko’s wind. You can all do amazing things on your own as well in the future, but training together will mean that you have more power, more easily, than on your own.”

A quick scan of her student’s faces indicated that they were all rather nonplussed, and Sakura laughed.

“Right. I understand how you feel. That was a bit of an information-dump, I’m sorry. How about we all break for lunch so you have some time to absorb what you can of it, and then have our regular hour of meditation after I answer your questions?”

“That sounds great, Shimizu-sama,” Yoko enthused, and the group broke apart for a little while.

* * *

The next week passed in a similar fashion as before; a lot of meditation and a lot of theory about chakra and its uses. However, on the day that the house was finished construction, Sakura called a day off so that everyone could finally unpack and stop living out of their bags, while she made her way inland to purchase some household essentials. So far laundry had been done by ferrying people and their clothes up and down the mountain to reach streams, and the same for hunting and gathering water. This wouldn’t do for much longer, especially now that the house had been finished and the temple was under way.

Sakura made a large purchase that day, using every last bit of the money in Seiichi’s last gift to do so, ignoring the flicker of pain in her heart as she did so. It felt like giving away a piece of herself. The only comfort she felt was that it would set up their small town for life.

To begin with, Sakura bought bamboo, some bamboo seeds, and supplies to make things such as wicker baskets. Secondly, she needed supplies for creating a blacksmith’s forge; this came in the form of blacksmithing tools and some mortar for bricks. She’d only have to get clay and fire it carefully over the new grill she’d gotten in order to make a kiln, and then to bake bricks in that to make the forge. She decided to help herself out by buying a small amount of clay as well. Thirdly, they needed to begin farming, so she picked up a few farming tools, a few good sacks of soil, and some fertilizer, as well as crop seeds. Finally, she got a small cage with a rooster and three chickens in it, as well as enough feed to last them a year just in case the crops didn’t take. Finally, she also sprung on two sacks of fresh, sweet-smelling grass for bedding and to line the chicken’s cage until they could figure out a better way to pen them.

Now, usually it would be a bit difficult to get all that across a body of water, but Sakura had been intelligent and bought two more canoes. Tying the three together by stringing rope through a small hole she’d carved out of the sides (at the very top, where water would normally not reach), the kunoichi created a suitable harness, using a spacer bar to keep the drag even instead of pulling it to a small point that would cause the boats to fight each other to follow her. This harness would be easier to wear and would keep the boats together, carefully avoiding capsizing them. Sakura carefully loaded both boats with the supplies she’d gotten, breathing a sigh of relief when the canoes didn’t sink under the weight.

It was only when she got back to their shore that Sakura realized that Seiichi had probably given her his entire life’s savings, for her to be able to afford so much at once, and burst out in tears. It took her a long time before she could start bringing her purchases up to the plateau.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone brought up an interesting concept: the land's spirits being able to grant Kekkei Genkai. While I won't say whether this is or isn't something I've planned to do before, or whether I now plan to, I find it an interesting concept.
> 
> What do you all think? Would you like to see new kekkei genkai formed as an investment (or reward) of sorts by the spirits of the land? If so, who do you think should get them, and what do you think the kekkei genkai should be?
> 
> I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.
> 
> Additionally, I'd like to thank you all for your patience, and for sticking with me despite the length that sometimes goes between my updates, and for your comments. It means a lot to me.


	8. A house is built

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Farming is a difficult lifestyle, but when you have a strong, capable kunoichi around to do all the work...

The canoes were hidden on the shore under foliage, and Sakura was on the plateau showing her ‘town’ their new belongings. Ryou was ecstatic about the chickens, seeds, soil, and fertilizer; he quickly got to examining the chickens before turning to Sakura.

“We’re going to need more water,” he said with a frown.

“Yes, we are,” Sakura replied. The pinkette was still a little shaky, but composed herself admirably. “I have a plan for that, but for now we need buckets so that we can store what we need.”

“What is this?” Yoko asked, pointing to the clay and tools.

“I’m a journeyman blacksmith. I’ll be able to create some of the things we’ll need.”

Yoko brightened up considerably after hearing that, and some of the tension left the others. Apparently they’d been worried about metal needs.

“Good,” Hansuke said, “We’re out of nails.”

“I’ll get on it as soon as the forge is ready,” Sakura agreed, before gesturing to the rest of their new things. “For now, please store what needs to be stored, and find a place for the chickens. I’ll tackle the farm issue as well with you later, Ryou. I have an idea for it that could help with irrigation, especially with our current water source issues.”

Ryou looked intrigued. “What do you mean?” he asked, brow furrowing as he thought about it. “I hadn’t really thought of a good way to implement the farm yet, on such a rocky, flat terrain…”

“Well, I can cut through stone. It takes a lot of effort, but if I use my chakra scalpel… er, if I use a blade made from my life force, I can cut a line for it to follow, and then punch it so that it cracks into a crater that will be contained within a certain area. Then we’ll have a farm at normal floor height with spacious rows for the soil to be contained within, as deep and wide as you think necessary, with little pot-like areas for flowers. The ground around it will be hollowed out to form a bit of a moat, and there will be a line between every second row hollowed out, and water can flow along those channels and collect in the moat at the bottom. There will be a small trough at the start, which we can drink from if we’re thirsty, which will begin to gently allow water to flow if we pull up a bit of metal that blocks it. Then I’ll have a large trough at the bottom that will collect all the water that went past the crops and into the moat when they were watered, which will help to water our animals once we have them, and will be an acceptable bathing place until then. The pens for the animals can be lowered a little into the ground to make the trough more accessible to them and to make escapes harder.”

Ryou thought about this for a moment, and nodded. “I see no issue with this idea,” he agreed, “It certainly would help cut down on wastewater, especially if the… ‘moat’... where the water collects is sloped so that it naturally drains towards the trough. We’ll still need fencing for livestock, but the extra precaution couldn’t hurt so long as we make sure it’s smooth and rounded so that they can’t harm themselves on the edges.”

“A good point. I’ll see about making some rough cuts with you later to mark out where I should focus on making the farm, and how large you’d like the different areas to be. Pick a spot you think will feed twelve people year-round if we’re careful. That’s the size we’ll start with, so that we can sell any excess and won’t have to worry about expanding right away if people join us.”

Where Ryou was ecstatic about the farming and livestock options in their near future, Yumi was excited about the metal grille they could use to cook food over a fire (and also to fire bricks for the kiln and forge that Sakura would be needing to make). She’d quickly scampered off with it, a hasty promise to Sakura that she’d give it back after lunch barely out of her mouth before she vanished. Shiori, for her part, quietly took the bamboo and wickering materials and began to weave baskets and buckets with an expert hand. One very long, arm-thick piece of bamboo, however, she presented to Sakura.

“Cut it into two thirds, and then hollow one end as closely as you can without piercing to the other side,” Shiori requested quietly. “It will be satisfactory for holding water. If we only had the kind of fires we had before…” she sighed.

“What do you mean?” asked Sakura, brow furrowing.

“Well, we had a way of directing hot flame that would allow us to cook the bamboo once we cut it into the shape we wanted, without burning it, while it was still green like this. Then it would turn tan, or darker brown, depending on how long we wanted to treat it with fire. Then it would be hardy, durable, would not rot, and would remain clean.”

Sakura smirked. “I think I can help with that. Help direct me to cut the appropriate pieces the way you’d like them, and then I’ll do the rest.”

In the end, Sakura had twelve mug-sized cups, each with a stylistic angled top to cut down on how much material was used for each mug and to allow for easier guided pouring. Additionally, there were twelve (if longer than wide, and semi-cylindrical) plates… or bowls? Either way, they were serviceable and along with the bamboo chopsticks and cooking utensils, the set of dishware was rather appealing… after the first three trial pieces, which were mangled and useless even for weaving shreds of bamboo with. Add to that the three extra pieces that she burnt to a crisp despite careful control of her chakra, due to her inexperience with a _katon_... well.

  


* * *

  


It didn’t escape Sakura’s notice that Yoko was slowly growing ever more proficient with sheer use of chakra… or that her coils were far more flexible and ready to produce chakra than most untrained adults’ would be after starting training. Nor did she fail to notice that Shiori’s chakra was fairly brimming with lightning nature, as it had only grown more and more prevalent after the reveal using chakra paper, or that Ume and Yumi had grown impishly close, coordinating their efforts in rather admirable ways despite the fact that they hadn’t even gotten a single real ‘mission’ yet, or even their headbands. It would take a long time for the four of them to have advanced enough theory to earn that, though, so Sakura didn’t mind all too much that she hadn’t yet crafted any. To that end, Sakura approached Ume, with her pink yukata in hand. Loathe as she was to alter a gift from Seiichi… she knew he would scoff at her for sentimentality when they had no true tailors and no fabric besides.

“Ume, Yoko said that you have skill with sewing. Do you think that you could take in the sleeves of this yukata, so that I can have some spare fabric from it? I need strips about this wide, and this long… around four of them,” she said, gesturing with her hands for the general size of a headband.

Ume eyed the ‘specifications’ Sakura gave her, and then the yukata’s sleeves before nodding. “I can do something for you. Luckily I thought to bring my sewing kit. Give me a few days and I’ll have it back to you. You may not even notice much of a difference, if we’re lucky. This style of yukata has very wide arms, so I can take most of it from the width of the arms instead of focusing quite so much on shortening the sleeves.”

Sakura beamed in response, before bowing respectfully and murmuring her gratitude, only to be pleasantly surprised by Ume’s clear embarrassment.

“Ah, no,” Ume stammered, “Please don’t, Shimizu-sama. You have no need to bow to me-- to any of us. We’re all in your debt, and your care. Something like this is the least we can do.”

Then it was Sakura’s turn to blush and look away, murmuring gratitude yet again, followed by an excuse before heading outside. Work was to be done, and it wouldn’t get done without her. Well, at least some of it wouldn’t.

  


* * *

  


One of the lovely things about construction being done for the main house had to be that the altar was finally getting a modestly-sized temple built around it. It had room for small alcoves along each wall, two doorways, and the main feature, as well as a walkway that wouldn’t be blocked by someone sitting in prayer or thought. Sakura was pleased, and patted the altar fondly, sending it a tiny spark of nature-chakra again along with her thoughts. While the pinkette didn’t focus on anything in specific, she did focus on her general positivity and well-wishes for the land’s spirits, before lighting a stick of incense. It calmed her immensely, and she turned to head back to the farm area with Ryou.

A few days had passed since she’d spoken to Ryou last on how best to make the farm, and she had put the majority of their plan into effect. The farm was large and well-contained; they’d made a small fence around it that would keep chickens and other small livestock out, though if they ever managed to get something like cattle it would be a different story. Goats would probably be more manageable, Sakura decided, if they ever got to the point where goats were a feasible venture.

As for the chickens, they’d built a sizeable coop for them, with a bamboo fence and a long roof that covered the entire area, up against one wall of the house. It was both fortunate and unfortunate that they didn’t have access to shoji panels yet; the rice paper screens would be gorgeous and a morale booster as the architecture would be much more familiar than the all-wood building, but the wooden walls were much sturdier and allowed for such things as the chicken coop to be attached.

On the other side of the house from the chicken coop was the beginnings of Sakura’s forge: the kiln had been completed, bricks meticulously grilled over a fire, until the kiln was serviceable. It looked anything but pretty or reminiscent of what Sakura had seen even at Seiichi’s smithy, but it would serve its purpose well. At the moment, she’d dug up and baked enough clay bricks to make half of the forge itself, and after that it would be a process of using the tools she’d bought to make and shape metal enough to recreate the slag-separating setup she’d become familiar with before she could work metal with any true accuracy or skill. Oh, and she’d need an anvil. While making a quick mental note to use a tree stump to carve a rough mold for one, Sakura’s mind flitted from subject to subject as she approached the farm and began to smooth out the small trenches she’d hewn previously under Ryou’s supervision. These small trenches would contain soil and fertilizer, and house the plants. Some were more like pots than trenches out of necessity. Some were large circles; a few were as large as two feet in diameter, and one as large as five feet. These larger circles were also quite deep; Ryou had planned for trees, at some point, so that they could have fruit and avoid scurvy, which Sakura had wholeheartedly agreed with. Of course some of the trees below the mountains had fruit, but the more self sufficient they were atop the mountain, the better.

Fetching a bag of soil, Sakura carefully began filling some of the trenches, including one special group of trenches that were quite shallow, set into a depressed flat area, which would later be filled with water for growing rice. The others she filled would be used for bamboo, wheat, and corn, which they had some seeds for. Once it was done, she used a careful suiton jutsu, half-formed, forcing her chakra to cooperate in merely drawing some water out of the air and misting the soil she’d packed into the planting sites. Then, she repeated the gesture for the small rice field, with Ryou’s instruction on how much to use to avoid over-flooding the dirt.

When their seeds were ready to be planted, Sakura relaxed and headed towards the forge. Clay was still drying from her last foray down to the treeline in a search for the substance, and she needed to check on it to see if it was ready for firing yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been hectic. I apologize! On the bright side, however, it is much easier to write when you finally get AC installed. It's been so hot...


	9. Lessons Learned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura teaches, and her students face their first test.

The long-missed familiarity of aching muscles brought a measure of peace to the pinkette as she pumped the bellows for herself, timing the metal and heat with the heavy breaths that escaped her. Though she’d gone without it long enough to start to lose the trade, having only been an apprentice, it still felt like home in a world that hadn’t yet become welcoming to her.

“You’re amazing,” one of the girls murmured, eyes wide, as the group watched Sakura pour the now molten metal down the metal pouring chutes swiftly and with the ease of practice, eyeing the levels of slag with a derisive sigh. This was an impure load, for sure, more than normal.

“We’ll have a lot of slag for potters and glassworkers,” Sakura hummed, choosing not to respond to the compliment. “That’ll be useful. They can take slag that has been crushed or chipped for decorative and functional purposes. There is little that we can waste, with so few resources, and smithing can be just as frugal.”

“Where did you learn?” Yoko asked quietly. In response, Sakura’s fingers twitched and she stilled in the middle of a pour, then scrambled to continue lest the metal harden again and waste her latest bout of exercise on the bellows.

“I learned from a precious person named Seiichi,” she divulged softly, an edge of warning overlaying, but not hiding, the undercurrent of vulnerability. “He passed just a short time before I first met you.”

“I’m sorry,” and there was nothing else to be said afterward. In companionable silence, Sakura worked and her four apprentices watched with interest.

“I have no plans to teach any of you the craft without your interest and consent,” Sakura announced, “But I would like to teach you how to use the bellows. It is an excellent way to build up muscle mass safely, with my supervision. I can heal the aches and help you speed the process, though I will only do so a little, when necessary, and not all the time or overmuch, so that your muscles can get natural rest as well. We’ll work in pairs; two of you on one day, the other on the next, and the day after all four of you rest. That way there are two days of rest between each session. However, on the third day, in the morning, you’ll run laps. As you grow stronger, the amount of work you do will be increased, using weights if necessary. This will not be a pleasant process, and you will quickly learn the skill of washing with speed and often to avoid smelling. Additionally, the scented washing aids you are currently using will be discontinued as soon as they run out. I’ll be acquiring unscented washing materials from now on.”

Yoko audibly gasped at the idea of giving up her favorite strawberry-scented shampoo, and both Yumi and Shiori pursed their lips in displeasure at the thought of giving up their own scented products. Ume, however, merely nodded, as if she’d anticipated it.

“But why?” Yoko mourned, sniffling. “Why would we need to get rid of such lovely things--”

“The life of a kunoichi,” Sakura interrupted, “Is not dainty or soft. There may be times when such products are appropriate, such as missions on which you must pretend to be a civilian. However, such things only allow others to track and identify you, to know where you are. Someday your life may depend on being unable to be sniffed out, and using such things would only give your attackers a clear trail to follow… either to you, or your vulnerable ones at home.”

Yoko grew solemn quickly, to her credit, and bowed her head. “So the bottles we have left are the last?” she asked, accepting it with minimal fuss now that she’d had the reasons explained.

“Once you are ready to retire, or taking vacations, and the village is safe, with active duty jounin to guard it, we will have them again,” Sakura reassured, smiling gently. “Fret not. It is not permanently banned from your life. I must only demand the lack of them now, while you are training, and until you are used to it, so that you will not be caught off guard because you are using them or surprised with the loss when it counts.”

Yoko heaved a sigh of relief, while Shiori smiled in response. Neither Yumi or Ume reacted, likely already having decided to go without, although Sakura suspected Yumi was merely fluid enough to be okay with whatever came. Yumi was like her primary element that way, able to float on. It was Ume that was more polarized on such things, preferring to remain with that which drove her, which led her to burn brightly.

“So, how do we work the bellows?” Ume asked, eyes gleaming in the light of sunset filtering through the leaf-awning above the forge.

“Here, I’ll show you,” Sakura smiled. Teaching others what Seiichi had taught her, she discovered, had the unexpected effect of making her feel close to him once more. As Ume clumsily worked the bellows, Sakura turned to gaze at the sunset, her smile fading just a little and softening at the edges, becoming more vulnerable.

“Thank you again, sensei,” she whispered breathlessly, to avoid making noise. “Thank you. I hope I can make you proud, one day.”

Sakura closed her eyes helplessly against the unshakeable feeling, thrilling along her spine, that he would have said she already was.  


* * *

  
“Cherry blossoms, oh cherry blossoms. In fields and villages, as far as you can see. Is it fog, is it a cloud? Fragrant in the morning sun, cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms, flowers in full bloom,” Sakura sang quietly as she did her laundry in the barrels of water she’d brought up the mountain.

“Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms, across the spring sky, As far as you can see. Is it mist, is it a cloud, fragrant in the air? Come now, come now, let’s look at last!” Yoko joined in, giggling at the end of the folk song. 

Wonder of wonders, as they finished singing together, an odd sensation of sudden breeze wafted across them, and it smelled of cherry blossoms. When Sakura stood, the sudden breeze gone as quickly as it came, her eyes widened to see a small copse of cherry blossoms along the stream south of the mountain plateau.

Wordlessly, the two women set aside their laundry and ran reverently to the stone altar to light incense and bow their head in gratitude, respect, and prayer that the island retain this strength and beauty and generosity for ever.  


* * *

  
Days began to blur slowly together for the few people living on the back of the great island. The plateau they were currently living on, Ryou, Hansuke, and Sakura had decided together, would primarily be one for religious pursuits, a market once the town was large enough, and farming. The other would be the primary residential zone, so that instead of everything inside of the village being decimated in the case of an attack that Sakura alone could not halt (though she found that idea very strange considering the lack of resistance she’d met thus far), any attacker would have to split their decision between immediately attacking the people and trying to sever their food sources. Of course, either way, there would be skilled nin guarding both halves of the village equally, but it made sense to make the village more of a tricky scenario for outsiders, causing them to stop and consider their next move.

Still, just because days began to blur together didn’t make it an awful thing. Time passed in a pleasant haze of good, honest labor, with breaks and no harsh deadlines, relaxation, good food, and now, a touch more independence.

Sakura had taught her pupils to walk on vertical surfaces, beginning with the side of their house (thank goodness for the sturdy wooden walls). 

After two weeks of training muscles and chakra by way of bellows, running laps of the rather large plateau, and wall-walking, Sakura finally decided it was time. Ferrying all four girls down to the base of the mountain, she gently put them down and pointed back up to the plateau.

“Your assignment for today is to walk all the way up to the top,” she announced. “You’re more than proficient enough now to do it. You just have to be careful, make sure not to use too much chakra at once, and believe in yourself. If you need help, whistle once. If someone is falling, whistle twice-- then I’ll jump over the edge to get there quicker instead of running down. If you can, flare your chakra as well if you’re the one in trouble, it’ll help me identify who to go to.”

Awe and worry made a space in her student’s faces, and Sakura smiled encouragingly.

“Don’t fret, either of you. You’re doing well. In fact,” and Sakura smiled. “In fact, you’re well on your way to becoming genin. This is something you don’t usually learn until after you become a genin, but because it’s dangerous for only one of us to be able to reliably make the trip up and down, I need to teach this to you before some of the other lessons.”

“Hai,” Ume responded stiffly, already staring at the mountain like she would dominate it, and Sakura frowned.

“Ume,” the pinkette said softly, “The mountain will never be something to conquer. You must work with it to complete this task, you know that, right?”

Something in Ume’s expression softened, and she nodded, gazing back at Sakura. “I know. I just… I want to do this. I need to show I’m capable.”

Assessing Yoko, Yumi, and Shiori for their agreement only took a moment, and then Sakura backed up a step.

“Don’t begin until I jump and wave to you,” Sakura said. “I’m going to walk up, the way you should, to show you the best path.”

That said, Sakura began the decently long trek up the side of the mountain, choosing the safest footing so that her pupils would have less reason to falter, and turned to jump in place and wave down at them when she reached the edge. It took a moment, so she laughed and sat down where she stood, feet dangling over the edge as she watched over her students like a hawk.

Pride suffused her when, thirty minutes later, all four of them, sweaty and exhausted but triumphant, dragged themselves up to sit next to her.

She gave them ten minutes before she said, “Alright. A quick, light jog around the plateau to cool off, and then go thank the island and mountain for giving you safe passage on your first journey up the mountain.”

Groans escaped them, but they got up to do it, and even chorused a soft “Yes, Shimizu-sama,” at her.

Life was good.  


* * *

  
Sakura didn’t want to teach more than four women at once, but she knew that they needed more people. Not because of food, really, but because of a lack of skills. The village would need potters, glassworkers, civilians of all kinds, and yes, more nin to defend it. There was no use in pretending that five nin, four of them pre-genin, would really be able to defend the village if (spirits defend them from it) some threat bigger than what she’d previously faced arrived.

Instead of going out right away however, Sakura added more people to the backlog of things that needed doing in her mental itinerary. For now, she had a more pressing issue: tackling water sources.

Now that her students had slowly begun to master travelling up and down the mountain, there was a bit more independence, but that meant nothing for water in the future if they were unable to leave the mountain because of a siege.

Kneeling at her favorite spot in front of the altar, shifting until she sat in seiza style, Sakura lowered her head and prayed.

“Please, great spirits. I ask a favor of you. If you could possibly assist, without exhausting yourselves, in helping me to make a spring atop this plateau, that we might drink clean, fresh water every day without travel, and feed the source again with a small waterfall I would craft down the side… please guide me in the way to assist, where to interfere and where to leave things be, and the sense to understand what you would ask of me in return. I know this may seem a paltry question of convenience, but I think ahead, to the dangers that may occur, not just to us but to your wondrous forests, if we were under siege and our opponents thought poisoning your streams would kill us. I would loudly advertise our spring atop the plateau among the facts of our village, so that none would be so blind as to attack you to get to us. I… also beg of you, if possible, to give sprout to a few trees among the mountainsides someday. It would make an excellent perch for our scouts, that we may see any danger to you or ourselves in comfort and allow our nin to leap up and down the mountain quickly without fear of slipping.”

Sakura blended and molded her chakra into that half-familiar natured chakra that she had grown so used to making these days, and gently pulsed as much as she could into the mountain, stopping when she reached the point that she knew she would be exhausted and pass out if she continued. Lighting incense and bowing once more, she touched her forehead gently to the altar.

There was a rumbling, and a sudden loud splashing and gurgling. Shouts of alarm and then surprised joy met her ears, and Sakura smiled weakly.

“Thank you, great spirits. You already had my gratitude and respect, but every day I grow to understand a new level of both. I hope one day I can find the words to show you how deeply I feel them. Thank you for assisting us in our pursuit of life and peace.”

Another small rumble, this time from Sakura’s stomach, and she laughed helplessly before getting up and running to the others. Slightly dizzy, both from the drain in chakra, and an unknown effect she would soon learn a lot about, she met with the six people she was responsible for and told them about how the mighty island and mountain worked together to give them a spring, that they might have a fresh water source, and a waterfall, that it might feed itself even as it was, as she later discovered, also fed by other ponds and rivers. The generosity of these spirits was celebrated for an entire week, and then Sakura made her first true decree as a leader.

“Thanks to Shiori’s foresight in bringing a calendar,” Sakura announced, “We can keep track of time as everyone else does, and I’ve gone through the effort of making more to continue the timeline. Every monday from now on will be a day of gratitude, wherein we take the time to officially thank the forces here that have been so kind and cooperative as to allow us not only to live on their backs but also to make a home here for us. Every fourth monday will be a small festival, where everyone comes together to do so loudly and happily. It won’t be much until there are more of us, but we will cook our best foods and share cultures and give thanks to them for allowing this all to exist.”

Her citizens agreed with enthusiasm, understanding by now just how powerful these spirits were and already endowed with a sense of respect for them, and Sakura relished the fact of her power… and the respect given to her. _I will never,_ she thought warmly, _do anything to threaten the respect and trust they have in me. Not like those that came before me-- like those that came after this._

Little did she know that she had already changed things drastically. Those that she had once known now existed in a very different world, and every change she wrought separated the two pasts (hers, and theirs) dramatically. There was, however, one consistent fact: Sakura had always been born, had always slipped through the cracks, had always risen to greatness, and had always been abducted, believed to have been killed young. If Sakura could see the Konoha her changes had led to, she would be honored to have wrought that change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems I'm cursed to produce short chapters! This one has a lot of spirit interaction in it, and some glossed-over descriptions of Yoko, Yumi, Ume, and Shiori's current training regime. There'll be more of that later-- or more detail, at least. Additionally, with their latest accomplishment, they will soon be learning academy techniques and facing the exam to become genin! It will be much different than that of regular Konoha; Sakura doesn't have enough paper, for one, and there are other concerns, and other skills that the squad will have to learn in the meantime. But it's coming up on them faster than they might think, and the headbands are in the works. 
> 
> What do you think the headbands will look like? What do you think the 'unknown effect' Sakura experienced without realizing it will be? What did you like or dislike about this chapter, aside from the shortness (hahaha oh no)? I'm eager to see the thoughts of anyone that is interested in sharing them. : ]
> 
> While I've learned I can't make any promises about length, I've also decided to put it to a vote. Knowing my somewhat-long update time, should I take extra time to try and write a longer chapter for the next one, or should I try to keep up with updating as frequently as I can? What would you prefer?


End file.
